The provision of infrastructure and related services in developing Asia via public–private partnership (PPP) increased rapidly during the late 1990s. Theoretical arguments support the potential economic benefits of PPPs, but empirical evidence is thin. This paper develops a framework identifying channels through which economic gains can be derived from PPP arrangement. The framework helps derive an empirically tractable specification that examines how PPPs affect the aggregate economy. Empirical results suggest that increasing the ratio of PPP investment to GDP improves access to and quality of infrastructure services, and economic growth will potentially be higher. But this optimism is conditional, especially on the region’s efforts to further upgrade its technical and institutional capacity to handle complex PPP contracts.

Learning from experience to improve future infrastructure public-private partnerships is a focal issue for policy makers, financiers, implementers, and private sector stakeholders. An extensive body of case studies and “lessons learned” aims to improve the likelihood of success and attempts to avoid future contract failures across sectors and geographies. This paper examines whether countries do, indeed, learn from experience to improve the probability of success of public-private partnerships at the national level. The purview of the paper is not to diagnose learning across all aspects of public-private partnerships globally, but rather to focus on whether experience has an effect on the most extreme cases of public-private partnership contract failure, premature contract cancellation. The analysis utilizes mixed-effects probit regression combined with spline models to test empirically whether general public-private partnership experience has an impact on reducing the chances of contract cancellation for future projects. The results confirm what the market intuitively knows, that is, that public-private partnership experience reduces the likelihood of contract cancellation. But the results also provide a perhaps less intuitive finding: the benefits of learning are typically concentrated in the first few public-private partnership deals. Moreover, the results show that the probability of cancellation varies across sectors and suggests the relative complexity of water public-private partnerships compared with energy and transport projects. An estimated $1.5 billion per year could have been saved with interventions and support to reduce cancellations in less experienced countries (those with fewer than 23 prior public-private partnerships).

To analyze the effect of an increase in the quantity or quality of public investment on growth, this paper extends the World Bank’s Long-Term Growth Model (LTGM), by separating the total capital stock into public and private portions, with the former adjusted for its quality. The paper presents the LTGM public capital extension and accompanying freely downloadable Excel-based tool. It also constructs a new infrastructure efficiency index, by combining quality indicators for power, roads, and water as a cardinal measure of the quality of public capital in each country. In the model, public investment generates a larger boost to growth if existing stocks of public capital are low, or if public capital is particularly important in the production function. Through the lens of the model and utilizing newly-collated cross-country data, the paper presents three stylized facts and some related policy implications. First, the measured public capital stock is roughly constant as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) across income groups, which implies that the returns to new public investment, and its effect on growth, are roughly constant across development levels. Second, developing countries are relatively short of private capital, which means that private investment provides the largest boost to growth in low-income countries. Third, low-income countries have the lowest quality of public capital and the lowest efficient public capital stock as a share of GDP. Although this does not affect the returns to public investment, it means that improving the efficiency of public investment has a sizable effect on growth in low-income countries. Quantitatively, a permanent 1 ppt GDP increase in public investment boosts growth by around 0.1–0.2 ppts over the following few years (depending on the parameters), with the effect declining over time.

This work is a part of research on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Cr-Ni-Si steels after various thermal treatments [1, 2]. The need to minimize damage and losses caused by emerging failures in complex engineering facilities such as nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric power stations, and gas and oil pipelines necessitates the creation of materials of high strength, plasticity, welding and high rigidity.

Embassies are important buildings, involving the diplomatic image of a country’s government in another foreign country. Given the rising tensions between countries, either political, economic, religion or war, attacks on embassies have been increasing in recent years. Thus, it is evident that appropriate measures are to be taken to reduce the potential impact of an attack. The paper discusses the measures in enhancing building security of embassies. The principles for Security Planning and Design are discussed, followed by an introduction to a systematic security risk assessment framework. The framework is evaluated regarding the potential security risk posed by an attack against elements of the mega infrastructure using explosives. Further options to increase the security of embassies are also explored to reduce the risk of a potential attack. A security-enhanced building, planned and constructed well to specifications, can provide benefits to the client, including greater cost advantage and increase of value for the structure.