There is an IMF working paper prepared by Mona Hammami, Jean-Francois Ruhashyankiko, and Etienne B. Yehoue (Mona Hammami is a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford University. Jean-Francois Ruhashyankiko and Etienne Yehoue are Economists at the IMF. This paper was initiated while Mona Hammami was a summer intern at the IMF Institute.) In this paper they have put forward some basic questions like :
“Why are public-private partnerships (PPPs) increasingly widespread? Why are some
countries able to attract more investments in the form of public-private partnerships than
others? Why are certain types of PPPs found in some industries but not in others? What
determines the extent of private sector participation in such ventures with the public sector?”
This paper has made some hypothesis about the determinants of PPP in various countries. It says that there are factors related to:
1. Government constraints assumes two hypothesis:
H1: Governments with large deficits and a heavy debt burden are more likely to have PPPs.
H2: Rentier countries with large sources of exogenous revenue have soft budget constraints and are therefore less motivated to engage in PPP projects.
2. Political Environment assumes three hypothesis:
H3: PPP arrangements are likely to be positively correlated with ethnic fractionalization.
H4: Governments friendly to market-oriented policies are more likely to engage in PPPs.
H5: PPPs are more prevalent in politically stable countries with accountable governments.
3. Market Conditions and Macroeconomic Policies assumes two hypothesis:
H6: PPPs tend to be more common in larger markets where demand and purchasing power are greater.
H7: PPPs are more prevalent in countries with credible, predictable, and stable macroeconomic conditions. In particular, countries with lower inflation and stable exchange rates are more attractive candidates for PPPs.
4. Institutional Quality and Legal System assumes three hypothesis:
H8: Countries with weak institutions and low-quality bureaucracies are more likely to
display high country risk and are therefore less likely to foster PPPs.
H9: PPPs will be more common in countries with strong and effective legal institutions.
H10: PPPs will be more prevalent in environments where the legal code (laws on books)
better protects investors’ rights.
5. Past Experience with PPPs assumes this hypothesis:
H11: PPP arrangements are likely to be higher in countries with previous PPP experiences.
6. Private Participation in PPPs assumes one hypothesis:
H12: The extent of private participation in PPP arrangements is likely to be positively correlated with the degree of impurity of the goods or services to be provided and the technology structure required to provide them.
They have used the data from World Bank Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) database to prove their hypothesis set above. They have used econometric tools to analyze their data collected on PPP projects in various sectors. The research has indicated that “PPPs are at the heart of governments’ attempts to revive infrastructure investments in advanced as well as developing and emerging market economies.”
The results indicate that the market conditions channel is the most important channel of determinants of PPPs. The evidence suggests that larger market size and higher customers’ purchasing power are crucial determinants of PPPs. The evidence from the macroeconomic stability channel suggests that inflation or lack of price stability limit the number of PPPs. At the same time, the evidence does not show any significant difference of private participation in PPP arrangements across all regions except for sub-Saharan Africa. These regional disparities occur while holding constant all seven channels—government constraints, political environment, market conditions, macroeconomic stability, institutional quality, legal systems, and past experience with PPP.
If we see logically, then all the points mentioned above play an important role in attracting PPPs in a country.
