Description:
Infrastructure has particular challenges
in public procurement, because it is highly complex and
customized and often requires economic, political and social
considerations from a long time horizon. To deliver public
infrastructure services to citizens or taxpayers, there are
a series of decisions that governments have to make. The
paper provides a minimum package of important economic
theories that could guide governments to wise
decision-making at each stage. Theory suggests that in
general it would be a good option to contract out
infrastructure to the private sector under high-powered
incentive mechanisms, such as fixed-price contracts.
However, this holds under certain conditions. Theory also
shows that ownership should be aligned with the ultimate
responsibility for or objective of infrastructure provision.
Public and private ownership have different advantages and
can deal with different problems. It is also shown that it
would be a better option to integrate more than one public
task (for example, investment and operation) into the same
ownership, whether public or private, if they exhibit
positive externalities.