Public-private partnerships are used to procure public infrastructure. Despite involving private investors and concessionaires, they impact the public budget like traditional provision and create fiscal risks. This paper develops a conceptual framework to assess whether and how public-private...

In the early 1980s Chile reformed its electricity sector, introducing a regulatory framework that became influential worldwide. But in 1998 and 1999 La Ni?a brought one of the worst droughts on record, causing a price system collapse, random power outages, and three-hour rotating electricity...

Cities exist, grow, and prosper because they take advantage of scale economies and specialization wrought by agglomeration. But output growth inevitably stresses transport infrastructure because production requires space and mobility. To prevent congestion from crowding out agglomeration...

Regulating seaports is difficult in general, even more so for the weak regulatory institutions common in developing countries. For this reason some countries have awarded these facilities via Demsetz auctions, to the port operator that bids the lowest cargo-handling fee. A major concern with...

It has become increasingly common to allocate highway franchises to the bidder that offers to charge the lowest toll. Often, building a highway increases the value of land held by a small group of developers, an effect that is more pronounced with lower tolls. We study the welfare implications...

In many circumstances, a principal, who wants prices to be as low as possible, must contract with agents who would like to charge the monopoly price. This paper compares a Demsetz auction, which awards an exclusive contract to the agent bidding the lowest price (competition for the field) with...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have the potential to increase efficiency and improve resource allocation. However, contract renegotiations are common and make us question the benefits to PPPs. Under current accounting standards, PPPs allow intertemporal reallocations of infrastructure...