Data for: Too much and too fast? Public investment scaling-up and absorptive capacity

Abstract of associated article: A recent trend in several low-income developing countries has been a rapid scaling-up of public investment. It is argued that in the presence of limited absorptive capacity countries are not able – in terms of skills, institutions, and management – to translate additional public investment into sustained output growth. We test for the presence of absorptive capacity constraints using a large dataset of World Bank investment projects, approved between 1970 and 2007 in 80 countries. Our results indicate that projects undertaken in periods of public investment scaling-up are less likely to be successful, although this effect is relatively small, especially in poor and capital scarce countries. We also verify that this effect is unrelated to large aid flows and donor fragmentation.

关联文章摘要：近期，在多个低收入发展中国家，公共投资的迅速扩大已成为一种趋势。有观点认为，在吸收能力有限的背景下，各国在技能、制度和经营管理方面无法将额外的公共投资转化为持续的产出增长。本研究采用世界银行1970年至2007年间在80个国家批准的大规模投资项目数据集，对吸收能力限制的存在性进行检验。研究结果表明，在公共投资扩大期间实施的项目成功可能性较低，尽管这种影响相对较小，尤其是在贫困和资本匮乏的国家。此外，我们还验证了这种影响与大量援助资金和捐赠方碎片化并无关联。