Workshop "Public private partnerships and infrastructure investments" A Law and Economics Perspective

Call for Papers

Workshop

PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS AND INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS A Law and Economics Perspective

May 7th – 8th, 2020

La Chanchellerie des Universités de Paris

Villa Finaly
Florence, Italy

Over the last three decades, the spreading experience with public private partnerships (PPPs) in OECD and emerging countries has confirmed that private firms and organizations may play a substantial role in building, operating and maintaining public infrastructure in key sectors – e.g., transportation, energy, telecommunications, healthcare, education, defense. At the same time, the international experience has revealed major pitfalls of this form of collaboration between governments and the private sector. Long- term infrastructure contracts are frequently renegotiated, thus dissipating part of their potential value for money, sometimes associated with corruption or soft budget constraints, other times with inflexible contracts. More generally, poor governance and weak contracting in infrastructure procurement by PPPs tends to dampen ex ante competition and foster ex post opportunism both from the private sector and from government officials. Anticipating future trends, better public governance and contract flexibility are likely to play a central role in improving of PPPs and the process of investments in infrastructures. Methodologically, the law and economics approach may provide innovative tools and perspectives to address these issues in a systematic way.

The workshop will gather academics, practitioners, and public officials. A non-exhaustive list of topics includes:

• Flexibility in contracts and renegotiation;
• Resilience of contracts and conflict resolution mechanisms;
• Big-data analysis of PPP and infrastructure contracts;
• Governance of infrastructure planning and procurement;
• Corruption in PPPs and procurement procedures;
• Financial regulation of PPPs and infrastructure contracts;
• Fiscal rules and fiscal accounting of PPPs.

Papers on issues that do not fall within the mentioned topics are welcomed and will be considered for inclusion in the papers’ sessions of the final program. The final program will include two keynote lectures by leading scholars. Also, a round table and a special session will be organized to foster discussion among academics and practitioners on case studies and policy issues.

The authors may also consider to submit their papers for publication in a special issue of the European Journal of Law and Economics, following the procedure and schedules that will indicated in a separated call for paper to be issued shortly.

Keynote Lectures

• Alexander Galetovic (Universidad Adolfo Ibañez)
• Elisabetta Iossa (Tor Vergata University of Rome)