this tendency as hirschman recognized is particularly acute in developing countries while individual projects associated with softer infrastructure are often smaller compared to harder projects such as in energy or transport the difficulties of excluding some users and their nonrival nature means they are likely to be provided at less than full cost to users therefore they have usually relied on significant and continuous public sector financing moreover while recognizing the potential longterm benefits of these types of infrastructure spending in terms of productivity innovation and employment creation it can be difficult to measure these benefits in the short term making them vulnerable to political expediencies and budgetary pressures