This paper reviews the Latin American experience with highway privatization during the last decade. Based on evidence from Argentina, Colombia and Chile, we find that private financing of new highways freed up fewer public resources than expected because public funds were often diverted to bail...

In this paper we show that fixed-term contracts, which are commonly used to franchise highways, do not allocate demand risk optimally. We characterize the optimal risk-sharing contract and show that it can be implemented with a fairly straightforward mechanisma least-present-value-of-revenue...

A seaport is awarded in a Demsetz auction to the operator bidding the lowest cargo-handling fee. The competitive auction is irrelevant if the port operator integrates into shipping and sabotages competitors, thus providing a motive for a ban on vertical integration. The paper shows that such a...

The government contracts with a foreign firm to extract a natural resource that requires an upfront investment and which faces price uncertainty. In states where profits are high, there is a likelihood of expropriation, which generates a social cost that increases with the expropriated value. In...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly used to provide infrastructure services. Even though PPPs have the potential to increase efficiency and improve resource allocation, contract renegotiations have been pervasive. We show that existing accounting standards allow governments to...