IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdf/wpaper/2021-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Private Partnerships in Britain: Interpreting Recent Experience

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Britain was in the forefront of utilising Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and contracting out from the 1980s. The British experience of increasing disenchantment with private finance and outsourcing in recent years is therefore of considerable interest. Private contractors have not proved invariably better at managing government services than direct government supply. Nearly complete measurement of the service is highly desirable if the supply is to be successfully contracted out or provided by a PPP. Though potentially beneficial for controlling project whole life costs, bundling different stages of supply boosts the size of the contract, which in turn reduces the number of potential competitors and the intensity of competition for the contract. Credible risk transfer continues to be challenging. H M Treasury project appraisal in some respects was biased in favour of private finance projects and yardstick competition between procurement routes remains underutilised. Private finance has been shown an expensive way of massaging the national debt-gdp ratio, although less than 10% of government investment is at stake. On the other hand, considerable experience has been obtained in controlling whole life project costs with other, simpler, procurement routes.

Suggested Citation

  • Foreman-Peck, James, 2021. "Public Private Partnerships in Britain: Interpreting Recent Experience," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2021/12, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2021/12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://carbsecon.com/wp/E2021_12.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    2. Eva I. Hoppe & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2013. "Public-private partnerships versus traditional procurement: Innovation incentives and information gathering," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(1), pages 56-74, March.
    3. Oliver Hart, 2003. "Incomplete Contracts and Public Ownership: Remarks, and an Application to Public-Private Partnerships," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(486), pages 69-76, March.
    4. Kenneth J. Arrow & Robert C. Lind, 1974. "Uncertainty and the Evaluation of Public Investment Decisions," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 3, pages 54-75, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Oliver E. Williamson, 2000. "The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(3), pages 595-613, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2021. "Optimal ownership of public goods under asymmetric information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    2. Schmitz, Patrick W. & Kusterer, David J., 2018. "Government versus Private Ownership of Public Goods: Experimental Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 13204, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2015. "Government versus private ownership of public goods: The role of bargaining frictions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 23-31.
    4. Välilä, Timo, 2020. "An overview of economic theory and evidence of public-private partnerships in the procurement of (transport) infrastructure," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    5. Lechosław Rojewski, 2008. "Contracting and Transaction Costs in the Public-Private Partnership. A Conception in the Light of the New Institutional Economy," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 21.
    6. David Martimort & Flavio Menezes & Myrna Wooders & ELISABETTA IOSSA & DAVID MARTIMORT, 2015. "The Simple Microeconomics of Public-Private Partnerships," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(1), pages 4-48, February.
    7. Evans, Lewis & Meade, Richard, 2005. "The Role and Significance of Cooperatives in New Zealand Agriculture, A Comparative Institutional Analysis," Working Paper Series 3847, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    8. Yukari Fukuda & Jun-ichi Nakamura, 2021. "Economic Analysis of Public-Private Partnerships in Japan: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses Focusing on Adverse Selection and Synergy Effect," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 17(2), pages 1-27, November.
    9. Birgitte Grøgaard & Asmund Rygh & Gabriel R. G. Benito, 2019. "Bringing corporate governance into internalization theory: State ownership and foreign entry strategies," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 50(8), pages 1310-1337, October.
    10. Hoppe, Eva I. & Kusterer, David J. & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2013. "Public–private partnerships versus traditional procurement: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 145-166.
    11. Pursey Heugens & J. Oosterhout & Muel Kaptein, 2006. "Foundations and Applications for Contractualist Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 68(3), pages 211-228, October.
    12. Yuri Biondi, 2009. "Capital budgeting under relational contracting: optimal ranking and duration criteria for schemes of concession, project-financing and public-private partnership," Post-Print hal-00404305, HAL.
    13. Sacchetti, Silvia & Tortia, Ermanno, 2012. "The internal and external governance of cooperatives: the effective membership and consistency of value," AICCON Working Papers 111-2012, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    14. Min Huang & Mengyao Li & Cailing Huang, 2024. "Confucianism culture and green innovation: Evidence from Chinese industrial firms," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(5), pages 4862-4877, September.
    15. Boudreaux, Christopher, 2019. "Do private enterprises outperform state enterprises in an emerging market? The importance of institutional context in entrepreneurship," MPRA Paper 93039, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Matyukha, Andriy, 2017. "Business groups in agriculture impact of ownership structures on performance: The case of Russia's agroholdings," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies 254051, Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    17. Mathias Dewatripont & Patrick Legros, 2005. "Public-private partnerships: contract design and risk transfer," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/175947, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    18. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2013. "Job design with conflicting tasks reconsidered," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 108-117.
    19. Antonczyk, Ron Christian & Salzmann, Astrid Juliane, 2014. "Overconfidence and optimism: The effect of national culture on capital structure," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 132-151.
    20. Williamson, Oliver E., 2010. "Transaction Cost Economics: The Natural Progression," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 215-226.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2021/12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Yongdeng Xu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecscfuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.