Form Of Public-private Partnership Research Articles

Will They Fly?: Different Forms of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in New Zealand’s UFB Initiative

Starting in October 2009 with a tender (Invitation to Participate) procedure the Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative the government of New Zealand intends to deliver fiber connections (i.e. 100Mbps/50Mbps) to 75 percent of New Zealanders by 2019. Broadband penetration levels in New Zealand have slowly been catching up compared to other high-income OECD economies. However currently it seems that the contribution of the UFB initiative to broadband penetration in New Zealand is not as expected. The article discusses the industry structure in the broadband market and the effects of regulation in New Zealand and relates this discussion to developments in the broadband sector in Europe. In this context the paper examines the different forms of PPPs in New Zealand's UFB initiative with respect to their (expected) effects on roll out of broadband in New Zealand. The paper builds on the literature on the appropriate contract choice in regulated markets (Demsetz 1968; Williamson 1976). Similar to Bettignies & Ross (2004) it focuses on the extent to which the relationship-specific investment and the complexity (or uncertainty) of the exchange environment has an impact on the form of PPPs (Bettignies & Ross 2004; Crocker & Masten 1996). It examines in greater detail the task and risk allocation in the different PPPs whereby the contracts between LFCs and CFH can be considered as a joint venture and the agreements between Chorus and CFH as more contractual forms. We conclude that problems with the UFB initiative might emerge as the demand risks are not sufficiently specified which might slow broadband adoption in New Zealand.

Public-Private Partnerships in the Italian Healthcare Sector: The Analysis of Organizational Forms

This study aims to analyze the phenomenon of innovation in health management: public-private partnerships within the Italian healthcare sector. The main goal of the paper is to measure the degree of organizational maturity (OM) of the forms of public-private partnerships (PPP), analyzing and measuring key managerial processes, in terms of innovation in meeting the partnership’s goals/targets. The analysis is based on the identification of key processes relevant to the management of partnerships, to check which systems of governance are able to meet different stakeholder interests. We therefore built a conceptual standard for analysis of the OM through a field survey based on visits, participant observation, analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews with the management.

Accountability and corporate governance of public private partnerships

Brennan and Solomon (2008) identify six new frontiers in accountability and corporate governance research to stimulate research. This paper contributes to such research by devising a reporting framework and research agenda that relates to Brennan and Solomon's fourth frontier, sectors and context, focusing on the regulated hybrid organisational forms of Public Private Partnerships, which operate at the interface of the public and private sectors. As the framework shows, these organisations are subject to multiple influences and demands. There is a need for more and different reporting than is the norm under the private sector's decision-useful reporting framework. Although the framework focuses on what Mulgan (2000) describes as the core of accountability, it is not only a financial reporting framework but it also seeks to make concrete Kamuf's (2007) argument that accountability might include accounting through narrative as well as the prevailing numeric evaluation. The paper stresses the need for information to be accessible to the public, and in particular argues that a stream of information between the public and private sector partners needs to be developed and disseminated to achieve accountability for public money that is increasingly spent in the private sector.

Public-private partnership: World practice and Ukrainian perspectives

The views of experts about the impact of public-private partnerships at the international image and competitiveness of the country are emphasized. The article reviews European experience of public-private partnership, main problems and perspectives of such cooperation in Ukraine. An importance of improving the mechanisms of public-private partnership for attracting investors to effective cooperation in the form of public-private partnership is grounded.

Product Development Partnerships: Case studies of a new mechanism for health technology innovation

There is a continuing need for new health technologies to address the disease burdens of developing countries. In the last decade Product Development Partnerships (PDP) have emerged that are making important contributions to the development of these technologies. PDPs are a form of public private partnerships that focus on health technology development. PDPs reflect the current phase in the history of health technology development: the Era of Partnerships, in which the public and private sectors have found productive ways to collaborate. Successful innovation depends on addressing six determinants of innovation. We examine four case studies of PDPs and show how they have addressed the six determinants to achieve success.

Public-Private Partnerships and Sustainable Agricultural Development

Agriculture in Africa is not sustainable because average yields have been stagnating for decades due to underinvestment, especially in the development of agricultural markets, crop improvement and the sustainable management of agricultural systems. Low public sector funding for agricultural research and lack of incentives for the private sector to operate in areas where there is no market largely explain the yield gap in many food-importing developing countries. Yet, there are effective ways in which the public and the private sector could work together and jointly improve agricultural sustainability in poor countries. The public sector provides a favorable institutional environment for the development of agricultural markets and investment in rural infrastructure, facilitates local business development and funds research with local relevance. The private sector, in return, brings its considerable expertise in product development and deployment. This article illustrates how new forms of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for agricultural development can work in challenging environments. It discusses three promising examples of PPPs in which the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) is actively involved, and shows that an experimental approach can sometimes be more effective than social planning in efforts to achieve sustainable agriculture.

Privatising Criminal Justice? Shopping in the Netherlands

The Netherlands is encouraging Public Private Partnerships (PPP) for reducing problems of crime and anti-social behaviour. This article reports research done by the author on the Collective Shop Ban, allegedly the most successful form of Public Private Partnerships currently operating in the Netherlands. With the Collective Shop Ban, shopkeepers have their own measure to keep individuals who exhibit anti-social behaviour from entering their shops. In this way private parties, i.e. shopkeepers and security personnel, are co-responsible for detecting and punishing classic punishable acts such as shoplifting and fraud. The Collective Shop Ban is an interesting measure to study, all the more because it is no longer based primarily on criminal law, but on civil law. It is interesting to see to what extent the Collective Shop Ban differs from the Dutch criminal law approach, what this civil law approach means for the perpetrator, and what are the legal and societal consequences.

Modern mill technology and centralised processing system, an alternative for improving performance of palm oil mills in Abia State, Nigeria

An assessment of palm fruit processing technologies in Abia State palm oil industry was carried out in this study. About 95% of the mills were in the small scale category with capacities in the range 0.2–3.0 t/hr. Majority (80–90%) of the mills still utilized local drums for sterilisation of fruit and clarification of oil. Palm fruit digestion and oil extraction operations have been mechanised to some extent with about 90% of the mills having one device or the other to handle the operations. Hand-operated screw press was predominant (80%) in most of the mill as a device for palm oil extraction. Fruit stripping was manually carried out. Nut/fibre separation by mechanical method is adopted by small group (40%) of the mills and 90% of the mills utilize nut cracker to crack their nuts. Most of the machines being utilized are sourced locally. Maintenance of the machines was being carried out mainly when they develop faults. More than 50% of the mills have abandoned one machine or the other with breakdown of machines being the predominant reason. Most of the mills sourced fruit by purchase or served as processing centre. The extraction rate of the mills was very low and was in the range of 7–13%. Cost of production was very high when compared with other West African palm oil producing countries. Introduction of a large scale mill utilising modern technology (and centralised processing system) in form of Public Private Partnership is being proposed. Such system will have to be backed up a palm oil act as well as adequate mobilization of the farmers in order to facilitate the adoption of the system by farmers. A modern mill of 5 t/hr capacity is being planned to serve a group of farmers in a catchment area as a model. This system will make available prompt returns to the farmers to strengthen their palm fruit production capacity and guarantee high quality oil that can be exported.

The challenge of building rural health services

The challenge of building rural health services

Additional funding mechanisms for Public Hospitals in Greece: the case of Chania Mental Health Hospital

ObjectivesTo investigate whether the long term lease of public hospital owned land could be an additional financing mechanism for Greek public (mental) health hospitals.MethodsWe performed a financial analysis of the official 2008 data of a case - study hospital (Mental Health Hospital of Chania). We used a capital budgeting approach to investigate whether value is created for the public hospital by engaging its assets in a project for the development of a private renal dialysis Unit.ResultsThe development of the private unit in hospital owned land is a good investment decision, as it generates high project Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return. When the project commences generating operating cash flows, nearly €400.000 will be paid annually to the Mental Health Hospital of Chania as rent, thereby gradually decreasing the annual deficit of the hospital.ConclusionsRevenue generated from the long term lease of public hospital land is crucial to gradually eliminate hospital deficit. The Ministry of Health should encourage similar forms of Public Private Partnerships in order to ensure the sustainability of public (mental) hospitals.

The Government as Reinsurer of Catastrophe Risks?

Compensation for victims of catastrophes is a hot topic in many countries today. Consequently, the legislator is increasingly intervening in the catastrophe insurance market in order to stimulate its functioning. Various forms of public-private partnerships have hence developed, although law and economics scholarship has differing views on this type of government intervention. The aim of this paper is to add to that debate by, on the one hand, discussing a few specific cases where the government acts as a reinsurer of last resort or as a primary insurer, and by, on the other hand, confronting these practical examples with five main conditions that would have to be fulfilled to make government intervention efficient—or at least as little disruptive as possible: market failure, the charging of risk-based premiums, the stimulation of existing market solutions, the freedom to choose for State reinsurance and the temporary character.

Attitudes Towards Alternative Management Policies for Public Recreation Lands

Public recreation land management agencies have been searching for ways to increase revenue. User fees as implemented by the Fee Demonstration Program have received the most attention. Corporate sponsorships and private donations have also been implemented and other options, such as partial privatization, closure of some areas, and different forms of public-private partnerships have been debated. The present paper reports results from a 2002 mail survey of randomly selected Idaho and New Hampshire households, designed to elicit public attitudes about a wide variety of management policies for public (federal/state) recreation lands. The most socially acceptable forms for raising revenue were donation boxes (61.1%), corporate sponsorships for visitor centers (61.8%) and education facilities (61.1%), and adopt-a-site contracts (81.0%). Both increased taxes and user fees faced greater opposition (about 49% of respondents) than support (39%). In addition, user fees have resulted in (reported) changes in behavior among a quarter of the respondents, and may have stronger negative impact on lowincome households and on the users of public recreation lands. This study is relevant to the current debate in Congress about the future of the Fee Demonstration Program. Our findings can also be used by policy makers interested in raising revenue through socially acceptable management policies. Our results suggest that donations, adopt-a-site and corporate sponsorships (for selected areas) should be used to raise additional revenues, and if additional funding is needed, policy makers may be justified to advocate for increased taxation rather than fees.

Infrastructure Development Strategies for Inclusive Growth: India’s Eleventh Plan

India’s Eleventh Plan includes strategies and plans for infrastructure development and inclusive growth during 2007 to 2012. The Eleventh Plan’s strategy involves an increase in investment in infrastructure through both the public and private sectors. In the private sector, the strategy is to promote investment directly where feasible or through some form of public-private partnership (PPP). Public investment has been given priority in areas where private participation is unlikely to be forthcoming. Where there is scope for private investment, the aim will be to attract such investment in a transparent manner with clearly defined responsibilities and an open, competitive bidding process. Infrastructure priorities include all-weather roads; round-the-clock availability of power at a stable voltage and frequency; water for irrigation; railways that are not overcrowded, run on time, and do not overcharge for freight; ports with low turnaround time to reduce costs of imports and exports; airports to handle growing air traffic; air services to connect all parts of the country; and telecommunications and broadband connectivity to provide the benefits of the Internet to people all over the country.

Public-Private Partnerships for the Unemployed

Under new dimensions of individualisation, decentralisation and particularly marketisation, new forms of public-private partnerships between the actors involved in the employment services for the unemployed have emerged. This is because for-profit providers have now entered the arena of welfare to work. The assumption behind these public-private arrangements is that the marketisation of public service delivery will lead to more flexible, responsive and innovative outcomes. Focusing on the implementation of back-to-work services for the unemployed for the UK, the Netherlands and Australia as forerunners of this development, this article sketches several theoretical backgrounds and conditions for effective and efficient back-to-work services and gives an insight to the struggles countries face in controlling recalcitrant practice, their policy lessons and the outcomes of these struggles so far.

Public Private Partnerships for Healthcare Delivery in India

Healthcare delivery is a major concern for India and other developing nations because of the lack of infrastructure and limited resources. Often the healthcare delivery is restricted in reach and most vulnerable populations remain untouched. The ambitious health goals for the country demand the need for an alternate system, which encourage the private and non-state players to engage in partnerships with the state run public healthcare delivery institutions. The current system of India also needs to be flexible and should be able to adapt to the changing health needs as well as respond to the risks and opportunities that may come in the future. A new mechanism in the form of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in healthcare delivery is being encouraged by the government. Such PPPs are being viewed as social experiments which can supplement the state run health services by engaging private players. These partnerships are based on different models and share different relationships with the other state and non-state players. It is also believed that the drawbacks of private healthcare delivery can be mitigated to an extent by these PPPs. The SAP-LAP analysis of the Indian healthcare system shows that such PPPs can be successful if sustainable models are promoted. There is also a need for a clear guideline or policy in formulating PPPs as these models tend to be quite varied in nature, scope and delivery.

Public-Private Partnerships in Slovenia: Recent Developments and Perspectives

AbstractIn this article, the authors define and analyze the legal framework for public-private partnerships (PPP) as a new institution under Slovenian law. In the first part of the article, the authors discuss the legal definition of PPP in the European Union. In the authors' opinion, the EU's concept of PPP can be defined and regulated in several ways. As a result, the understanding of PPP differs from one member state to another. A related issue is the question of the definition of 'public service'. Before defining and discussing new forms of PPP as determined in the 2006 Slovenian Law on PPP, the authors discuss the economic rationale for implementing the two types of PPP in Slovenia: special contractually based partnerships and corporate-based partnerships. The former can be a concession agreement or public-procurement agreement, while the latter is a type of newly established or newly transformed legal entity. In the next part of the article, the authors describe new legal procedures governing PPP arrangements in the future and and offer some limited empirical evidence on those concession agreements that already exist in Slovenia. The authors conclude the article with some open questions about the legal regulation of PPP in the Slovenian legal system as well as an international comparison.

Appraising Transport Investments in a Regulatory Regime

There has been considerable work in recent years improving the methods for the appraisal of transport investments under conditions of imperfect competition which gives rise to possible wider economic benefits. This paper examines the further situation where the market for transport operates under a range of regulatory regimes. This develops the issues which may arise in the appraisal of investments by various forms of public-private partnerships where there may be different objectives for the private and public sectors. The paper discusses the issues involved in different forms of regulatory regime on the basis of experience with regulated transport markets in the U.K. and the European Union’s trans-European networks to assess the effects on investment decisions which fall into different regulatory regimes.

L’État et l’hôpital à but lucratif au Québec, 1961–1975: une expériencedécevante de partenariat

In 1961, public hospital insurance created a new form of public-private partnership in Quebec by paying for care given in for-profit (proprietary) hospitals. How did it work? How did for-profit hospitals deal with governmental norms and regulations? Why and how was the door closed on the development of for-profit hospitals after a few years of experimentation? On the whole, this partnership proved to be chaotic and inefficient, plagued by endless negotiations. During the seventies, the government appears finally to have concluded that the partnership was not worthwhile. Public-private partnership in the hospital sector, then, existed well before the federal initiatives but has been largely forgotten, despite the reappearance of similar debates.

Simulation Devices in Interventional Radiology: Validation Pending

MEDICALsimulationoffersatantaliz-ing breadth and depth of potential fortraining and assessment in interven-tional radiology. It promises to providesolutions to many of the shortcom-ings of our traditional “apprentice-ship” training. Mandatory restric-tions on in-hospital work hours ofresident trainees limit the time avail-able for training and the breadth ofcase material to which the individualtrainee is exposed. At the same time,advances in noninvasive imaginghave reduced trainee exposure to in-vasive procedures. Thus today’s res-ident/trainee has limited opportu-nity to acquire the basic gatewayskills (eg, selective diagnostic cathe-ter angiography), upon which moreadvanced interventional skills arebased (1–3). Medical simulators en-gineered for interventional radiologytraining have the potential to ad-dress these gaps.Simulators introduce a novel capa-bility not only to train but also to es-tablish objective evidence of technicalcompetence during and after training(4–6). Although there is growing evi-dence for their effectiveness, few med-ical procedural simulations have dem-onstrated predictive validity. In otherwords, in very few instances has pro-ficiency with a medical proceduralsimulator been proved to transfer tothe clinical situation. This transfer oftrained skills to patients has now beenshown for simulations of laparoscopicsurgery, colonoscopy, and anesthesia(7–9), but at the time of writing, simi-lar evidence is still being sought forendovascular simulators.In the future, it is likely that simu-lations will be incorporated into certi-fication examinations for interven-tional radiology (6). Although it maybe intuitive that skills learned on sim-ulators should effectively transfer tothe clinical interventional radiologyenvironment, intuition is not evidence.A great deal of work on the develop-ment and validation of interventionalradiology procedural simulations mustbe completed before the inclusion ofsimulations on board, and other statu-tory, certification examinations can beendorsed. Ideally, the development andvalidation of the critical measures ofperformance (metrics) and test items tobe used in simulators should be ac-complished through a joint effort ofprofessional societies and the certify-ing bodies. Only in this way will weensure that the test instrument is com-patible with the educational curricu-lum and that the desired competenciesare being assessed. Input will be re-quired from psychologists and expertsin the subject matter, who will analyzeknowledgeandtaskperformance,break-ing them down into their key compo-nents (10,11). Metrics must be identifiedand used specifically for assessment ofthe learner. By design, this can be madeto occur automatically (by a simulator)within the context of a simulation. Thesubject experts involved in test develop-ment must be appointed with completetransparency by the certifying authori-ties. They must faithfully represent a ro-bust interventional radiology curricu-lum, with all facets of content, skill, andeven geographic diversity.Ideally a single, comprehensive setof procedures, skill sets, and metricsshould be defined and provided asopen source for incorporation into ac-ademic and commercial simulatormodels. Each set of metrics based onthe test items must in turn be vali-dated for its stated purpose. The di-versity of training environments rep-resented within and across radiologysocieties provides an excellent oppor-tunity for careful test validation. Theuse of trainees in transfer-of-trainingstudies will show whether skills ac-quired through simulation indeedtranslate into performance in patients.Subsequent review would demon-strate whether that performance ismaintained. Funding and support forthis work should derive jointly fromindustry, the various specialty societ-ies, and government agencies in theform of public-private partnerships.

Greening Electricity Production: A Success Story of Multi-Level Governance Convergence and Innovation

This paper analyzes the diffusion of wind power in Spain from the perspective of the multi-level governance features that contributed to the outcomes observed so far. Public authorities at all governance levels designed strategies that converged to reinforce each other's positive effects on potential investors and social acceptance. Next to implementing traditional policy instruments for financial support, Spanish authorities also engaged in direct capital investments in wind power, in the form of public-private partnerships, to reduce the risk perceptions of investors. Besides, regional authorities developed long-term strategies for wind power deployment to accommodate investors' plans. The convergence of these three strategies has led to a high investment interest and resulted in an exponential annual increase in the installed capacity of wind power.