February 2019: New VoxEU Column – The public and private marginal product of capital

Capital doesn’t flow to developing countries as much as economic theory suggests it should, and this might imply that capital is misallocated across nations. This column argues that once public capital is removed from the equation, the evidence shows that private capital is allocated remarkably efficiently across nations. It also suggests that the inefficiencies related to the allocation of public capital across countries can be significant and much larger than those related to private capital.