IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/edj/ceauch/347.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Financing PPP Projects with PVR Contracts: Theory and Evidence from the UK and Chile

Author

Listed:
  • Eduardo Engel
  • Ronald Fischer
  • Alexander Galetovic
  • Jennifer Soto

Abstract

Risk allocation is an essential component of a successful public-private partnership contract financed with user fees. For many of these projects, demand risk is large and mostly exogenous. This suggests that we evaluate contract designs that do not force the concessionaire to bear risk it cannot manage. In this paper we study present-value-of-revenue (PVR) contracts, which have this property. Under a PVR contract, the regulator sets the discount rate and the tariff schedule and firms compete on the present value of tariff revenue. The lowest bid wins and the contract lasts until the winning firm collects revenue equal to its bid. We provide a theoretical analysis comparing debt financing under a fixed term concession and PVR. We show that, other things equal, debt is less risky under PVR, particularly against large systemic shocks, and therefore debt-to-capital ratios can be higher. In addition, we show that the view that PVR does not mesh easily with fixed maturity debt is wrong. The reason is that demand realizations are independent of contractual forms. Finally, we analyze the experience with PVR contracts, considering two early examples from the UK and close to thirty PVR contracts for highways and airports in Chile. We conclude that PVR contracts have been at least as attractive to lenders than their fixed term counterparts. We also provide evidence of better incentives under PVR, in particular, a significant reduction of contract renegotiations. JEL Codes: H44, R42. Key words: default risk,fixed term contract,flexible term contract,Infrastructure concession,prepayment risk,project finance.

Suggested Citation

  • Eduardo Engel & Ronald Fischer & Alexander Galetovic & Jennifer Soto, 2019. "Financing PPP Projects with PVR Contracts: Theory and Evidence from the UK and Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 347, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
  • Handle: RePEc:edj:ceauch:347
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cea-uchile.cl/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/347-Ex-346_RF_PVR_Hoover_EFGS_2019_09_02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 2005. "Contract Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262025760, December.
    2. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    3. Ambrus, Attila & Egorov, Georgy, 2017. "Delegation and nonmonetary incentives," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 101-135.
    4. repec:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17678/ is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Jin Li & Niko Matouschek & Michael Powell, 2017. "Power Dynamics in Organizations," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 217-241, February.
    6. Nahum D. Melumad & Toshiyuki Shibano, 1991. "Communication in Settings with No. Transfers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(2), pages 173-198, Summer.
    7. Inga Deimen & Dezső Szalay, 2019. "Delegated Expertise, Authority, and Communication," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1349-1374, April.
    8. Mark Armstrong & John Vickers, 2010. "A Model of Delegated Project Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 213-244, January.
    9. Manuel Amador & Kyle Bagwell, 2013. "The Theory of Optimal Delegation With an Application to Tariff Caps," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(4), pages 1541-1599, July.
    10. Alessandro Pavan & Ilya Segal & Juuso Toikka, 2014. "Dynamic Mechanism Design: A Myersonian Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(2), pages 601-653, March.
    11. Yingni Guo, 2016. "Dynamic Delegation of Experimentation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 1969-2008, August.
    12. Steven R. Grenadier & Andrey Malenko & Nadya Malenko, 2016. "Timing Decisions in Organizations: Communication and Authority in a Dynamic Environment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2552-2581, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Juan Escobar & Qiaoxi Zhang, 2019. "Delegating Learning," Documentos de Trabajo 348, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    2. Arve, Malin & Honryo, Takakazu, 2022. "Wasteful procedures?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    3. Amador, Manuel & Bagwell, Kyle, 2020. "Money burning in the theory of delegation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 382-412.
    4. Gregorio Curello & Ludvig Sinander, 2020. "Screening for breakthroughs," Papers 2011.10090, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    5. Chen, Ying & Eraslan, Hulya, 2018. "Learning While Setting Precedents," Working Papers 18-001, Rice University, Department of Economics.
    6. Blume, Andreas & Deimen, Inga & Inoue, Sean, 2022. "Incomplete contracts versus communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    7. Letina, Igor & Liu, Shuo & Netzer, Nick, 2020. "Delegating performance evaluation," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), May.
    8. Ambrus, Attila & Egorov, Georgy, 2017. "Delegation and nonmonetary incentives," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 101-135.
    9. Neven, Damien & Piccolo, Salvatore & Andreu, Enrique, 2021. "Price Authority and Information Sharing with Competing Principals," CEPR Discussion Papers 16753, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Lipnowski, Elliot & Ramos, João, 2020. "Repeated delegation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    11. Sarah Auster & Nicola Pavoni, 2020. "Limited Awareness and Financial Intermediation," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 043, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    12. Dino Gerardi & Lucas Maestri & Ignacio Monzon, 2023. "Delegation with Endogenous States," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 711 JEL Classification: C, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    13. Waki, Yuichiro & Dennis, Richard & Fujiwara, Ippei, 2018. "The optimal degree of monetary-discretion in a New Keynesian model with private information," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(3), September.
    14. Auster, Sarah & Pavoni, Nicola, 2024. "Optimal delegation and information transmission under limited awareness," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(1), January.
    15. Navin Kartik & Andreas Kleiner & Richard Van Weelden, 2021. "Delegation in Veto Bargaining," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(12), pages 4046-4087, December.
    16. Özalp Özer & Upender Subramanian & Yu Wang, 2018. "Information Sharing, Advice Provision, or Delegation: What Leads to Higher Trust and Trustworthiness?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 474-493, January.
    17. Daniel Bird & Alexander Frug, 2019. "Dynamic Non-monetary Incentives," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 111-150, November.
    18. Guo, Yingni & Hörner, Johannes, 2020. "Dynamic Allocation without Money," TSE Working Papers 20-1133, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    19. Alex Frankel, 2021. "Selecting Applicants," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(2), pages 615-645, March.
    20. Andreu, Enrique & Neven, Damien & Piccolo, Salvatore, 2023. "Price authority and information sharing with competing supply chains," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    default risk; fixed term contract; flexible term contract; infrastructure concession; prepayment risk; project finance.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H44 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Goods: Mixed Markets
    • R42 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Government and Private Investment Analysis; Road Maintenance; Transportation Planning

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:edj:ceauch:347. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceuclcl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.