Infrastructure finance in Europe : insights into the history of water, transport, and telecommunications

Although funding infrastructure has always been a challenging issue in any country and at any time, the topic is still largely unexplored. A European history of infrastructure financing in the long run does not yet exist, and the purpose of this book is to partially fill the gap. It explores the diverse historical paths pursued in order to solve the problem of infrastructure finance in various European countries, drawing upon the findings of an international and interdisciplinary research project. Economic historians, economists, engineers grouped together to investigate case studies showing paradigmatic examples and to unravel their specificities across the Old Continent by combining evidence from the literature and untapped sources. The volume is structured into four sections; after an introductory chapter by the editors, the first section offers ‘horizontal’ contributions that encompass the entire history of European infrastructure finance. The other three sections deal with one single sector each, namely water, transport, and telecommunications. The recipients of this investigation are not only economic historians but also all those who deal with infrastructure planning, such as policy makers, economists and engineers, who have to disentangle complex problems relating to financing issues. They all can draw from these chapters original insights and interactions between theory and policy issues. The book shows that one single pattern fitting all does not exist in infrastructure financing, and it invites to consider history as a research laboratory in which to understand why the economic and financial dogmas of our times are challenged by past experience.