In this article we provide a brief overview of project finance modeling and compare the traditional spreadsheet based approach to using a web based tool. Full disclosure — we are the developers of the web based tool. The web based tool we describe alongside the spreadsheet based approach is called MyFinModel and this tool provides options for multiple financial models including project finance models.

The typical project finance modeling task entails the estimation of the project’s revenues, costs, income, the rate of return of the investment and a number of financial metrics. The most important of these metrics include the…

I. Introduction

Most start-ups in the software space are, naturally, founded by folks whose area of expertise is technical and not financial; they are more likely to be comfortable writing or debugging computer code than to think about income statements or balance sheets. In the early stages of a start-up it is not uncommon to not have a single person on the team who can understand a full set of financial statements let alone create them.

It is, however, important that the start-up ventures undertake some level of financial analysis to determine the financial viability of the venture or determine the need…

I. Introduction

This article provides an introduction to the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 1998 (TIFIA) Program. This program is an important source of credit assistance for transportation infrastructure projects in the US and it helps the projects achieve their funding requirements by offering terms that are often “more advantageous terms than in the financial market” [1].

The program is managed by the US Department of Transportation’s Build America Bureau [2] and the TIFIA website [3] provides background information on the program such as the goals and objectives, eligibility requirements, documentation requirements, program fees, etc.

We sought out to analyze…

In this brief note, we discuss some of the issues that insurance firms will face in the coming years as more and more vehicles adopt driverless features. Such features are being deployed at an increasing rate in regular vehicles to assist drivers in situations like parallel parking, getting out of a tight parking spot, etc. and some of the higher-end vehicles have options to use “driverless’’ mode. As the features evolve and get more widely distributed, there will be increased usage and instances where an insurance claim is linked to such features. …

This article provides an introduction to the various public data sources that exist at the Federal, State, County and local levels that can help enhance the typical data analysis assignment.

I. Introduction

The various agencies of the US government at different levels (Federal, State, County, and local) collect vast quantities of data and make these data available to the public. The challenge is to merge the data together to generate meaningful information. In this brief note, we discuss how publicly available data can be used to enhance typical data analytics project.

For the analysis shown below, we use the R software platform…

Introduction

The pursuit of happiness has been a common goal of the human society over thousands of years. It is even enshrined in our Declaration of Independence — most Americans will recognize “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’’ as one of our core human rights.

Now, there are a few among us who are happy most of the time either by nature or they are satisfied with their lot in life or for some other reason. This article is not for you. You are already blessed! …

This note provides an overview of the concession process for infrastructure assets. The concession process is an integral part of the public procurement process for the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects . The use of PPPs as a delivery mechanism for large infrastructure projects is an increasingly popular trend observed in several countries. While there is always the desire to have the procurement completed as quickly as possible, we believe that Governments should not rush to concession the project and instead the necessary time to develop the details of the project that help make the financial case to the investment…

I. Introduction

This article provides an overview of contingent liability in the context of Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects. PPPs are an increasingly popular method of developing infrastructure projects (highways, rail and transit systems, water treatment plants, ports, airports, electricity production and distribution, etc.) and it is important for policy makers, project developers and stakeholders to understand clearly what kind of exposure different parties have on the project.

Simply defined, a contingent liability is a potential liability that may occur, depending on the outcome of an uncertain future event. This liability can either be implicit or explicit.

• Implicit liabilities are political or…