Renegotiation of concession contracts in Latin America

The authors construct a regulation model in which renegotiation occurs due to the imperfect enforcement of concession contracts. This enables the authors to provide theoretical predictions for the impact on the probability of renegotiation of a concession, regulatory institutions, institutional features, economic shocks, and the characteristics of the concession contracts. Then they use a data set of nearly 1,000 concessions awarded in Latin America and the Caribbean countries from 1989 to 2000 covering the sectors of telecommunications, energy, transport, and water to test these predictions. Finally, the authors derive some policy implications of their theoretical and empirical work.Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Administrative&Regulatory Law,Decentralization,Labor Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,National Governance,Administrative&Regulatory Law,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Infrastructure concessions in Latin America : government-led renegotiations

The authors complement the existing knowledge in the renegotiation literature on infrastructure concessions by analyzing government-led renegotiations. They first propose a multiple-period theoretical framework in which both Pareto-improving and rent-shifting renegotiations at the initiative of the government can occur. They then perform an empirical analysis based on a sample of 307 water and transport projects in five Latin American countries between 1989 and 2000. While some of the main insights from the previous literature are unchanged, for example concerning the importance of having a regulator in place when awarding concessions and the fragility of price cap regulatory schemes, there are also significant differences as predicted by the model, in particular with respect to the effect of investment and financing, as well as the corruption variables. The authors provide additional evidence showing that a good regulatory framework is especially important in contexts with weak governance and political opportunism.

Concessions of Infrastructure in Latin America: Government-led Renegotiation

This paper completes Guasch, Laffont and Straub (2003), extending the analysis to the case of government-led renegotiations. We first extend the theoretical framework to a multiple-period context in which both Pareto improving and rent shifting renegotiations at the initiative of the government can occur. We then perform an empirical analysis based on the same sample of 307 water and transport projects in 5 Latin American countries between 1989 and 2000. While some of the main insights, for example concerning the importance of having a regulator in place when awarding concessions and the fragility of price cap regulatory schemes, are unchanged, there are also significant differences, in particular with respect to the effect of investment and financing, as well as the corruption variables. We also provide additional evidence showing that a good regulatory framework is especially important in contexts with weak governance and political opportunism.

Renegotiation of Concession Contracts in Latin America.

We construct a regulation model in which renegotiation occurs due to the imperfect enforcement of concession contracts. This enables us to provide theoretical predictions for the impact, on the probability of renegotiation of a concession, of regulatory institutions, institutional features, economic shocks and of the characteristics of the concession contracts themselves. Then we use a data set of nearly 1000 concessions awarded in Latin America and the Caribbean countries from 1989 to 2000, covering the sectors of telecommunications, energy, transport and water, to test these predictions. Finally, we derive some policy implications of our theoretical and empirical work.Renegotiation, Concession contracts, Regulation, LDCs.

Government Concession Contracts in Chile: The Role of Competition in the Bidding Process

Over the last 12 years, Chile has been very successful in attracting private participation into the provision of Public Infrastructure. Private capital has gone into road infrastructure, ports and airports all over the country in the form of Concessions. The aim of the 1991 Concession Law, and that of the specific contracts associated with each project, has been to provide much-needed infrastructure efficiently and without committing government resources better employed elsewhere. Using the contracts of four infrastructure projects involving the private sector in Chile, we show that even though these projects and the Concessions Program are positively evaluated, design flaws in the auction setup directly or indirectly reduced competition in the bidding process, negatively affected performance, created incentives for ex-post renegotiation and precluded welfare maximization.Contracts, concessions, bidding

Infrastructure Underpinnings of Trustworthiness in Infrastructure Contracts: Trust and Trust Perceptions

This paper discusses trust and trust perceptions in infrastructure contracts. We focus on perceptions of the trustworthiness of the government purchasers of infrastructure services (a) by supplying companies and (b) by governments. In particular, we allow for trust misalignments which may give rise to "undertrusting" and "overtrusting". The core of the paper sets out a game theoretic model of contracts which we use to explore the impact of trust misalignment both on economic efficiency and on investment levels, taking account both of asset specificity issues and maladaptation costs. We explore flexible contracts with and without pre-payments, rigid contracts (which do not allow for post-investment renegotiation) and hybrid contracts. Their efficiency is compared to an incentive compatible benchmark contract. The model is also used to shed light on current issues on the sustainability of private investment infrastructure contracts both in OECD countries (e.g. PPPs) and in developing countries.Regulatory Reform

Traffic Risk in toll motorway concessions in Spain: An analysis of the ramp-up period.

This paper analyzes the behaviour of actual traffic versus the traffic declared by the concessionaire in its offer in toll motorway concessions in Spain during the first few years of operation (ramp-up period). We obtain the result that, on average, there is a clear bias towards overestimation though the behaviour of any single concession may not have much to do with the average. In addition, we found that unlike what happens with annual traffic volumes, traffic growth rates are mostly underestimated by concessionaires in the ramp-up period. We explain this trend towards overestimation in the strategic behaviour of the bidders in the tender rather than in systematic modelling errors. The cause of this strategic behaviour lies in the willingness to renegotiate as shown by the government of Spain when actual traffic turns out to be lower than expected

The simple micro-economics of public-private partnerships

We build a unified theoretical framework to analyze the main incentive issues in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and the shape of optimal contracts in those contexts. We present a basic model of procurement in a multitask environment in which a risk-averse agent chooses unobservable efforts in cost reduction and quality improvement. We begin by studying the effect on incentives and risk transfer of bundling building and operation into a single contract, allowing for different assumptions on the contractual framework and the quality of the information held by the government. We then extend the basic model in several directions. We consider the factors that affect the optimal allocation of demand risk and their implications for the use of user charges and the choice of contract length. We study the relationship between the operator and its financiers and the impact of private finance. We discuss the trade-off between incentive and flexibility in long-term PPP agreements and the dynamics of PPP contracts, including cost overruns. We also consider how the institutional environment, and specifically the risk of regulatory opportunism, affects contract design and incentives. We conclude with some policy implications on the desirability of PPPs

Public-private partnerships in transport

This paper summarizes the evidence on the evolution of transport PPPs over the last 15 years or so. In the process, it provides a primer on the associated policy issues, including of the central role of project finance in the implementation of PPP policies and the debates on risk allocation in the design of PPPs. The paper also offers a discussion of the increasingly well recognized residual roles for the public sector in transport, with an emphasis on the regulatory debates surrounding the adoption of PPPs.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Debt Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Finance,