Infrastructure investment, growth and cohesion. Vol.1: Public investment: Composition, growth effects and fiscal constraints / Vol. 2: The economics of regional transport investment

In 2008 the European Investment Bank celebrates its 50th anniversary. Since its founding by the Treaty of Rome in 1958, the EIB has become a major financial institution supporting the European Union’s public policy objectives. Among such objectives, economic integration, convergence and
regional cohesion have featured most prominently over the years in the EIB’s operations. In concrete terms, this has meant the EIB providing financial and advisory support to countless infrastructure and other projects connecting European countries, regions and people in all conceivable ways.

The 2008 volume of the EIB Papers is devoted to infrastructure, growth and regional cohesion, issues at the heart of the EIB’s mandate. Drawing on presentations made at the 2008 EIB Conference on Economics and Finance, the contributions address a variety of themes such as: the composition of government investment and the share of infrastructure in it, changes over time in the productivity of public capital, the cost of funds in government infrastructure investment, the need and fiscal space for government investment, especially in the new Member States (all in Volume 13, Number 1), the role of infrastructure in shaping up economic geography, the determinants and
productivity of regional transport infrastructure investment, spillover effects of regional transport
investment on other regions, the economics of cross-border infrastructure projects (all in Volume 13, Number 2).