Fiscal risks associated with infrastructure are both more frequent and larger than previously assumed. Off the Books: Understanding and Mitigating the Fiscal Risks of Infrastructure quantifies the magnitude and prevalence of these risks in electricity and transport and identifies their root causes across a range of low- and middle-income countries.

In recent years, a number of emerging economies has begun to play a growing role in the finance of infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their combined resource flows are now comparable in scale to traditional Official Development Assistance from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries or to capital from private investors. These non-OECD financiers include China, India, and the Gulf States, with China the largest player by far. Despite the importance of Chinese infrastructure finance in Africa, relatively little is known about the overall value and destination of financing. The authors of 'Building Bridges' quantify the magnitude of financial flows from China by collating public information from a wide range of Chinese language sources. From these data, they document the geographic distribution of resources, the types of infrastructure involved, the size and financing terms of the projects, and the methods through which finance is being provided. The growth of China and other non-OECD players as important financiers represents an encouraging trend for Africa, given the magnitude of its infrastructure deficit. The investments made by these nations are unprecedented both in scale and in their focus on large-scale infrastructure projects. With new actors and new approaches to financing, there is a learning process ahead for borrowers and financiers, both new and old. 'Building Bridges' summarizes the issues involved in this learning curve, including developing the national capacity to negotiate complex and innovative deals, and to enforce appropriate environmental and social standards for project development.

While consumer utility subsidies are widespread in both the water and electricity sectors, their effectiveness in reaching and distributing resources to the poor is the subject of much debate. Water, Electricity, and the Poor brings together empirical evidence on subsidy performance across a wide range of countries. It documents the prevalence of consumer subsidies, provides a typology of the many variants found in the developing world, and presents a number of indicators useful in assessing the degree to which such subsidies benefit the poor, focusing on three key concepts: beneficiary incidence, benefit incidence, and materiality. The findings on subsidy performance will be useful to policy makers, utility regulators, and sector practitioners who are contemplating introducing, eliminating, or modifying utility subsidies, and to those who view consumer utility subsidies as a social protection instrument.