Construction firms in public–private partnerships: a place to grow

Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) constitute a crucial vehicle in delivering infrastructure. In the transport sector the primary project sponsors are construction companies, which over the last few decades have transformed to strong international actors. In order to study growth strategies stemming from the PPP agreement, a conceptual game theoretic model built on four institutional rationalities (legal, political and scientific in addition to economic) driving economic behaviour is presented. The model indicates that the prevailing strategies are training, acquisitions and step-outs. The former strategy is less efficient than the other two with respect to the single project. The latter two suggest the likelihood of “unproductive investments” influencing infrastructure quality and social benefits. All three strategies lead to market concentration, which has been evidenced in the market. The model only considers construction firm strategies and does not weight the relative importance of the operation phase with respect to the construction one. This would be an extension to the model, which would then also consider operator strategies. In its present form, the model indicates the conditions leading to “unproductive investments” and market concentration and provides the grounds to formulate policy guidelines to limit adverse effects.