Economic downturns present serious challenges but can also be viewed as opportunities for structural reform and targeted investment in strategic areas such as broadband. This raises several questions about how governments can best accomplish these goals without displacing or disrupting private investment. What criteria or principles, for example, should be applied in assessing where to...

This report forms part of the Mineral Council of Australia’s Vision 2020 Project – a project with the objective of addressing capacity constraints to growth that have afflicted the minerals industry in the past.

This paper presents a general model of the interaction between settlement and the emergence of de facto property rights on frontiers prior to governments establishing and enforcing de jure property rights. Settlers have an incentive to establish de facto property rights to avoid the dissipation associated with open access conditions. The potential rent associated with...

The PPP (public-private partnership) policy experiment has been wonderfully ambiguous and colourful. It has promised just about everything to everybody, from better value for money and on-time delivery, to innovation and reduced pressure on public sector budgets. Indeed, the PPP phenomenon is now a brand for third-way governments. Like Coca-Cola, PPPs are life. But underneath...

This study explores the scope for efficient financing to reduce the life-time cost of an infrastructure project and the potential of financing vehicles to improve the investment decision. It reports on the experiences of a number of countries following different approaches to help provide an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the different options.