Improving Economic Efficiency of Public-Private Partnerships for Infrastructure Development by Contractual Flexibility Analysis in a Highly Uncertain Context

Abstract

Public-private partnerships (PPPs), as long-term contractual relationships between the public and private sector, are usually controlled by a rigid contractual structure. This principle can reduce transaction costs but sacrifice opportunities to make PPPs more economically efficient by allocating and addressing future downside risks appropriately and flexibly during a long-term concession, which is full of unpredictable uncertainties that cause the failure of many infrastructure development projects under PPPs procurement. This article aims to present a novel type of proactive uncertainty management, contractual flexibility analysis (CFA), which can improve the economic efficiency of PPPs by incorporating flexibilities into the current way of contract structuring.