Governmental support strategies and their effects on private capital engagement in public–private partnerships

ABSTRACT

The ability to leverage private investment is a key selling point of infrastructure public-private partnerships (PPPs). Research has shown that to attract private capital to infrastructure projects government support is needed. However, the specific instruments of government support and their configurations remain unclear. Drawing insights from institutional theories and the public finance literature, this paper examines the government’s institutional and financial tools for leveraging private capital. Based on a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of 34 road projects in the U.S. we reveal the multiple configurations of government support strategies that are consistent with high private investment.

KEYWORDS:

• Public–Private partnership
• infrastructure finance
• private investment
• government support
• qualitative comparative analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2118821

Notes

1. The letters D.B.F.O.M. refer to “design”, “build”, “finance”, “operate”, and “maintain” respectively.

2. The Global Transactions Database was constructed by the Inframation Group. Several peer-reviewed articles (Casady et al. 2020, 2018; Loxley and Hajer 2019) have used this dataset in the context of PPP.

3. The detail of logical minimization process is provided in Appendix II.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the University Graduate School, Florida International University [DYF and DEA Fellowships].

Notes on contributors

Yanbing Han

Yanbing Han is a Research Assistant Professor of public administration at the School of Government in Nanjing University. His research focuses on infrastructure public-private partnership, and public budget and finance. Dr. Han holds his PhD degree in Public Affairs from Florida International University. As a public administration scholar, he has published in Public Management Review, Administration & Society, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, and so on.

Hai (David) Guo

Hai (David) Guo is a Professor of public finance at Wichita State University. His research focuses on state and local public finance and budgeting. Dr. Guo holds his PhD degree in Public Policy from the Joint Doctoral program of public policy of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Public Policy. As a public administration scholar, he has published in Public Management Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, American Review of Public Administration, and so on.