IMF Working Paper

From Global Savings Glut to Financing Infrastructure: The Advent of Investment Platforms - Working Paper #314

Sanjay Peters, Rabah Arezki, Frédéric Samama, Patrick Bolton, Joseph Stiglitz

Paper  1.36mb pdf

This paper investigates the emerging global landscape for public-private co-investments in infrastructure. The creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and other so-called “infrastructure investment platforms” are an attempt to tap into the pool of both public and private long-term savings in order to channel the latter into much needed infrastructure projects. This paper puts these new initiatives into perspective by critically reviewing the literature and experience with public private partnerships in infrastructure. It concludes by identifying the main challenges policy makers and other actors will need to confront going forward and to turn infrastructure into an asset class of its own

About the Authors

Sanjay Peters

Dr. Sanjay Peters is a Associate Research Scholar at the Committee for Global Thought at Columbia University and Associate Professor of Economics at the Department of International Economics and Management at Copenhagen Business School. He trained as an economist at California (BSc and MA) and the University of Cambridge UK (MPhil and PhD). Apart from having taught economics at a graduate level at Cambridge University (1998-2001), he has also worked as an economic advisor to the foreign office of the UK Government, consultant to the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program. He serves on the Editorial Board of several scholarly journals and as an economic advisor to a number of leading multinational companies, and governmental ministries within Europe, Asia and Africa. From 2008 to July 2011, he was Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and also the Director of the Center for Emerging Markets at IESE Business School. Prior to joining IESE, he was Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at ESADE Business School in Barcelona (2002-2008), Director of the China Executive Leadership Program and Academic Director of the Executive MBA Program at ISB (the Indian School of Business), both on behalf of ESADE. His main area of specialisation, and hence publications in academic journals and books are on emerging markets. His current research focuses on sovereign wealth funds and long term investment in infrastructure and development in Africa and other transition economies. He also carries out research work on the incentives for promoting growth and competitiveness within firms, entrepreneurship, analysing the determinants of macroeconomic growth, international economics, managerial economics, Neo-Coasian theories of the firm, measuring the impact of investments in human capital and institutional changes on economic growth.

Rabah Arezki

Rabah Arezki is the Chief Economist of the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa Region and a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He has published widely in academic journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, the European Economic Review, and the Journal of International Economics.

Frédéric Samama

Mr. Frédéric Samama serves as Deputy Global Head of Institutional Clients at Amundi. Mr. Samama served as Deputy Head of Institutional Clients and Sovereign Entities at Amundi Asset Management since November 2013. He started his career in 1991 at JP Morgan as the Head of Institutional Sales and Research on Convertible Bonds. From 1993 to 1997, he served as the Head of Equity Derivative Sales and Research at CA Cheuvreux. He later moved to CA-CIB, where he was in charge of the Corporate Equity Derivatives department, first in Paris, then in New York as from 2007. He notably developed the first global leveraged Employee Share Purchase Programmes (ESPP) on the international stage. He joined Amundi in New York in 2009 as Head of Investment Solutions for North America. In 2012, he moved to Amundi Paris as Deputy Head of Sovereign Entities. Throughout his career, he has also worked as an Advisor to several government institutions, including the French government and the French securities regulator (AMF), and has taken part in part in the works of the US State Department. He also founded the Sovereign Wealth Fund Research Initiative (SWF RI) in 2009. Mr. Samama is a graduate of the ESC Rouen Business School and of the Stanford Executive Program.

Patrick Bolton
Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business
Columbia University Business School

Joseph Stiglitz
President
Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)

Joseph E. Stiglitz is President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, and Chairman of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He is University Professor at Columbia, teaching in its Economics Department, its Business School, and its School of International and Public Affairs. He chaired the UN Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, created in the aftermath of the financial crisis by the President of the General Assembly. He is former Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank and Chairman of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2001.

Publication Information

Type Working Paper
Program -
Posted 07/19/18
Download 1.36mb pdf
# Pages 47