Financing Utilities: How the Role of the European Investment Bank shifted from regional development to making markets

Judith Clifton (judith.clifton@unican.es), Daniel Diaz Fuentes and Julio Revuelta
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Daniel Díaz-Fuentes

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In the face of continuing financial and economic crises, the European Investment Bank (EIB) has been criticized for being overly-conservative in its loans to Europe. Critics in particular have called on the EIB to vastly increase its investment in utilities as a counter-cyclical measure. To take stock and, in order to evaluate the role of the EIB in financing utilities over time, we compile and analyze an original database of all EIB utilities project loans from 1958 to 2004. We find the EIB started out by functioning as a regional development bank, prioritizing utilities finance in its members’ poorer zones; however, energy crises in the 1970s marked a shift whereby the logic of EIB finance to utilities became more politically-oriented. By the 1980s, utilities projects supported by the EIB were intimately related to those required for the Single Market. The origins of the EIB’s current conservative approach to utilities loans was born in the 1970s and fully consolidated by the 1990s.

Keywords: Infrastructure; policy.; International; Financial; Institutions.; European; Investment; Bank.; Economic; Development.; European; Union. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F36 F53 G24 N24 N74 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Financing utilities: How the role of the European Investment Bank shifted from regional development to making markets (2014)
Working Paper: Financing Utilities: How the Role of the European Investment Bank shifted from regional development to making markets (2013)
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