مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

A Public–Private Partnership (PPP) is an established mode of procuring infrastructure. The World Bank (2014) recorded more than 5000 PPPs in 139 low and middle income countries in the last thirty years (1984 to 2012). Leveraging project finance via a PPP is likely to increasingly appeal to governments in the context of rapidly expanding infrastructure deficits, a fiscally challenged global environment and the diminishing impact of monetary policy on economic growth (World Economic Forum, 2012). It seems reasonable, therefore, to speculate that PPPs are poised to play a leading role in delivering world infrastructure over the next few decades. This speculation is also underlined by listings of PPP projects worth hundreds of billions of US dollars across USA and China (Jackson, 2015; Ballantyne, 2015).

However, it is logical to expect long-term inefficient outcomes from a PPP when a government unduly pursues private finance in cases where its cost is higher than the cost of government borrowing. It is also logical to expect inefficiencies if a government adopts an extensive risk transfer regime, such as the transfer of risks associated with activities in a new infrastructure project in which government has inherent natural advantages. Meanwhile, there is no fundamental microeconomic framework to explain whether a project or part/s of a project can be efficiently assigned to a PPP.

The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a new theoretical framework (subsequently referred to as the PPP framework) that overarches and harnesses the application and integration of prominent microeconomic theories to explain whether an economic or social infrastructure project, either in whole or in part, is suited to a PPP mode of procurement. Central to this suitability question are the microeconomics of bundling property rights—associated with various design, construction, operations and maintenance (DCOM) activities that allow the PPP company to demonstrate efficiency gains to offset the cost of project finance (Hart, 2003; Iossa and Martimort, 2015). In this context, the PPP framework deploys microeconomic theories to explain how an efficient bundle of property rights associated with new infrastructure activities can be configured, or crafted, to determine whether a project or part/s of a project can be efficiently assigned to a PPP.