licenced operators in the railway, motorway, energy and telecommunications sectors).6 Only part of this expenditure goes through government financial accounts and is recorded under ‘contributions to investments’, a very heterogeneous item whose composition is affected by national specificities in the sectoral classification of the entities involved (within or outside the general government perimeter) and the ways in which public utilities are regulated.
Measuring a country’s infrastructure endowment is a complex exercise. One can use financial indicators based on the resources employed or instead rely on physical endowment indicators (e.g. the length and density of transport networks, energy and water supply, and telecommunications), which can also reflect topographical differences between regions and the degree of efficiency with which the resources are utilized.