Infrastructure and Growth in Developing Countries : Recent Advances and Research Challenges

This paper presents a survey of recent
research on the economics of infrastructure in developing
countries. Energy, transport, telecommunications, water and
sanitation are considered. The survey covers two main set of
issues: the linkages between infrastructure and economic
growth (at the economy-wide, regional and sectoral level)
and the composition, sequencing and efficiency of
alternative infrastructure investments, including the
arbitrage between new investments and maintenance
expenditures; OPEX and CAPEX, and public versus private
investment. Following the introduction, section 2 discusses
the theoretical foundations (growth theory and new economic
geography). Section 3 assesses the analysis of 140
specifications from 64 recent empirical papers-examining
type of data used, level of aggregation, econometric
techniques and nature of the sample-and discusses both the
macro-econometric and micro-econometric contributions of
these papers. Finally section 4 discusses directions for
future research and suggests priorities in data development.