Suchergebnisse

This paper examines the drivers of private investment in renewable energy by source of funding for 13 global economies over the period 2008 to 2018, with a focus on a sub-panel of Asian economies. Using a seemingly unrelated regression model, this paper provides a first quantitative estimate of the effect of government renewable energy policies on private investments across different sources of financing. Our results indicate that feed-in-tariffs (FITs) have the greatest overall effect in Asia on driving private investment in renewable energy, particularly from asset finance compared with other funding sources. The impact of FITs in Asia is also greater than that of the global sample. The impact of FITs is amplified in the presence of lower regulatory quality, which may be related to ease of market entry. We also find an important role in Asia for government expenditure on research and development in stimulating private investment. The magnitudes of the effects in Asia are broadly in line with the overall global sample. Finally, we find that technology costs, are less elastic on private investment in Asia compared with globally in affecting private investment in renewable energy across all funding sources, which may be related to the prevailing strong cost competitiveness of Asian economies in renewable energy provision.

This paper proposes a floating-interest-rate infrastructure bond, where the interest of a government bond is paid to investors during the period of construction and the early period of operation. Unlike the usual government bond, which provides a fixed interest rate, the proposed floating-interest-rate infrastructure bond pays a floating interest, the rate of which depends on spillover tax revenues. Effective infrastructure projects have a positive effect on the economic growth of a region, known as the spillover effect. When user charges and the return from spillover tax revenues are below the fixed rate of the government bond, the interest rate will equal to the fixed rate of the government bond. In this case, investors in the infrastructure will receive interest on the government bond at the minimum rate. As the spillover effect of the infrastructure increases, the rate of return for infrastructure investment will become greater than the fixed rate of the government bond. The success of the floating-interest-rate infrastructure bond depends on the spillover effect and on transparency and accountability. Policy recommendations are provided in this paper on how to increase the spillover effect and improve transparency and accountability.

This study aims to examine the impact of infrastructure on firm performance in nine CAREC countries: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Empirical analysis is based on the enterprise survey for 2009, 2013, and 2019. Infrastructure is measured by the duration of power outages, electricity expenses as the share of total sales, access to broadband internet and efficiency of customs. Firm performance was measured by total sales, share of utilized capacity, dummy variable if firm exports, and the share of export sales. Results indicate that firm performance measured through sales and capacity utilization is negatively affected by the duration of power outages and electricity expenses. Moreover, access to broadband internet significantly increases the total sales and export sales of small firms, while efficiency of customs increases the exporting activities of medium and large firms. These findings underline that for the development of private sector and international trade in CAREC countries, sustainable access to, and quality of, electricity, telecommunications, and customs efficiency are important objectives for government policy.