The definition and types of PPP can be seen here in my earlier post.
A paper by B. Raganelli, G. Fidone, Public Private Partnerships and public works, 2007 explains the relationship between the Public and the Private partner in PPP set up .It says that the public and the private partner shares Principal– Agent Relationship. They share a bilateral relation and they have to depend on each other for their functions. They end up having Information Asymmetries. The public entity looks after the public interest and good quality public work whereas the private entity is more concerned about the corporate profit.
A decision has to be taken while selecting the private party for the proposed project. There has to be clear rules and regulations which help the private party to understand the project in a better way so that it doesn’t result in Information Asymmetry. These clauses should be in line of the Public as well as Private party’s interest.
After selecting the private party, public party is unable to monitor the private party because of high monitoring costs so another problem arises of Moral Hazard. The private party indulges in practices which are contrary to the policies of the concession maker. This results in non performance of the private party leading to delay in completion of the project. That is why Penalty clause is always there in the concession agreement. The moral hazard problem could be solved by providing some incentives to the private operators for early completion of the projects or giving quality results.
All three problems namely Principal-Agent relationship, Information Asymmetry and Moral Hazard can arise in any of the project where two parties are involved and responsibilities are shared. A solution to these problems can be derived by making the concession agreement include all the possible clauses which could cause these problems to occur
