Suchergebnisse

Roads in Lithuania are financed only from collected road taxes; however, this funding is not sufficient for road maintenance and improvement. Lithuanian Road Administration under the Ministry of Transport and Communications allocates the funding received from European Regional Development Fund as follows: improvement of pavement of regional roads, implementation of traffic safety and environmental measures, and implementation of Gravel Roads Paving Programme. Since 2004 road projects in Lithuania have been financed from European Union funds. Unfortunately these financial resources are not sufficient for the implementation of all road investment projects in Lithuania. The problem of selecting the most effective road investment projects is becoming more and more acute. Road investment project alternatives have to be appraised in an integrated manner using mathematical models in addition to economic, social and environmental criteria. Scientific problem – road investment projects are often appraised from economic, social and environmental viewpoints separately by applying different mathematical models and without using the principle of sustainable development and multi-criteria appraisal methods for integrated analysis of road investments. The authors propose to select criteria from sustainable environment components, which best reflect economic, social and environmental aspects. It should be noted that these economic, social and environmental aspects are interrelated and complementary, and therefore influence the appraisal of road investment projects. The article analyses and evaluates the effectiveness of road investment project alternatives by combining economic, social and environmental aspects and processing the data using expert and multi-criteria appraisal methods. Scientific novelty – an integrated evaluation of economic, social and environmental aspects by using multi-criteria appraisal methods is proposed. The aim of the research – to present the road investment project appraisal methodology based on the ...

This report summarizes the investments in clean energy made by the operations departments of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2015, condensing information from project databases and formal reports in an easy-to-reference format. This report was prepared by ADB's Clean Energy Program which provides the cohesive agenda that encompasses and guides ADB's lending and nonlending assistance, initiatives, and plan of action for sustainable growth in Asia and the Pacific.

We analyze cost overruns in a large sample of public infrastructural investment projects in Portugal. The average cost deviation relative to the budgeted costs amounts to 24%. The large projects even have a higher cost deviation and a higher probability of cost overruns, which suggests that the public administration may not have sufficient expertise to forecast required investments and handle these types of projects. Cost overruns are more likely in election years, reflecting that politicians seem eager to speed up or conclude infrastructural investments, and thus, they inaugurate a new service to harvest political goodwill with the population. We document that cost deviations are reduced over time; however, this reduction does not appear to be the result of the new procurement laws but seem rather the result from the benefits of learning and increased fiscal constraints. A reduction in corruption positively correlates with cost deviations and the probability of cost overruns.

This article provides an overview of the corporate self-regulation by five European-based multilateral financial institutions where European environmental acquis is applied in investment projects in the third countries. Academic research on environmental standards suffers from a certain imbalance. While scientific studies of European ambient standards and standards regulating environmental performance and its consequences are ample, little has been written so far about their application by the European players outside the European Union. This gap in the literature is, however, critical, considering the leading role the Union seeks to play in the proliferation of high environmental standards worldwide.

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003465301753237731#.VMKObnvGp40. ; This paper theoretically and empirically examines ownership structure in foreign direct investment (FDI) projects. We show that in choosing an ownership structure, foreign investors, local entrepreneurs, and government consider the specific, costly-to-market assets that the participants and the country bring to the project. In equilibrium, the foreign equity share rises with the importance of foreign investor assets and declines with the contribution of local assets towards the amount of surplus generated in the project. Government policies and the institutional structure of the country also affect ownership structure.