Conclusions about the performance advantage of PPPs

The aim of this edited volume was to critically assess and empirically explore the existence of a performance advantage of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), focusing on cost performance, time performance, and service quality performance. In this concluding chapter, we take stock of the chapters in this book and integrate them with the observations made in the introductory chapter. We conclude that the evidence for a cost performance advantage remains mixed. However, when it comes to the performance dimensions of time and service quality, we conclude that PPPs have a clear performance advantage. Based on the chapters in this edited volume, explanations for this are mainly attributed to the incentives that PPP contracts provide–e.g., bundling, private financing, etc. We argue that future research efforts are needed on both ex-ante and ex-post assessments of quality performance, including broader performance criteria, the explanatory role of collaboration in performance differences, the democratic anchorage and accountability of PPPs, and the application of comparative methods that enable policy transfer and cross-country learning.