How is the Role of the State in Infrastructure Evolving?

This is an excellent report by the World Bank, Globalization and Growth Implications for a Post-Crisis World, with Michael Spence (a Nobel Prize-winning economist) and Danny Leipziger acting as editors.

Chapter 8 - Current Debates on Infrastructure Policy should be a must read for the civil engineering community:

"There are three basic debates on the role of the state in infrastructure.  The first is the debate about the extent to which the public sector should be the main provider of these services.  The second is the debate about how the government should deliver its regulatory responsibility in a sector that is characterized both by market failures and by extreme sensitivity to political pressure.  The final debate is about the optimal allocation across government levels for these two main responsibilities."

The bottom line - the civil engineering community needs to be thinking about these issues.  The word "evolve" as in evolutionary change may be totally misleading.  Change is coming and it might just be much more revolutionary than we think.  Anytime you are in a crisis, and we are in the middle of an infrastructure funding crisis, be on the look out for the revolutionary and not the evolutionary.