Local and territorial determinants in the realization of public–private–partnerships: an empirical analysis for Italian provinces

ABSTRACT Relational networks and intangible factors are crucial elements for the competitiveness of a territory. Public–Private–Partnerships (PPPs), in particular, allow for the provision of goods and services that favour the exploitation of complementarities between public and private resources. They aim at promoting an increase in the overall efficiency of investment projects through a complex mechanism that distributes risk and revenues among stakeholders. This paper examines the local and territorial determinants of PPPs through an econometric analysis based upon Italian municipal data, grouped at the provincial level. Using a tobit model, we analyse the relationship between the realization of successful PPP initiatives and different sets of factors, including less analysed local and territorial determinants. We stress the role of the local management of infrastructure assets, the administrative efficiency of local authorities and the diffusion of previous local development initiatives. Local management and territorial context factors explain most of the occurrence of successful PPP initiatives in the pre-crisis period while usual determinants (infrastructure endowment and financial distress) display a weaker effect

Territorial Capital And The Great Recession: A Nuts-3 Analysis For Southern Italy

Up to now, the analyses of the current "Great Recession" have been mainly confined to the national and international scale leaving aside the differential effects of the crisis upon regions and smaller areas. Although the current crisis has a strong international and global flavor, it must be admitted that the different structural characteristics of regions and urban areas might be often responsible for the specific economic and social impact of the recession and will strongly determine the possibility of resilience in the future. In the effort of better defining which regional characteristics may be considered as strategic for measuring the absorption capacity of the region vis-à-vis the great recession, in this paper we focus on territorial capital, a broader concept of capital which takes into account different characteristics of goods and services according to the degree of appropriability and rivalry (public or private) and the material or non-material physical content (Camagni, 2008). By making use of a large data set on southern Italian provinces which mostly focus on soft indicators of regional endowments, we try to measure the empirical relationship between territorial capital and the change in income per capita and employment. As a matter of fact, most "hybrid" elements of territorial capital (relationships between firms, cooperation networks, public-private partnership, governance of the territory, activity in the intermediation of innovation and so on) assume specific relevance in the building of territorial capital endowment of less developed and peripheral regions and may have been caused a different reaction at the regional or subregional level. Conversely, we also want to investigate the causality direction: in other words we ask ourselves if the territorial capital endowment enhances economic development or if the local economic performances contribute to capital accumulation and, furthermore, if the direction changes before and after the crisis. The interactive and cumulative nature of territorial capital accumulation generates differences that change only at very slow pace. This might influence not only the economic development of the unit of analysis but also the velocity of convergence at a provincial scale

Local and territorial determinants in the realization of public-private-partnerships: an empirical analysis for Italian provinces

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor and Francis in European Planning Studies on 17/07/2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2019.1640187 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Relational networks and intangible factors are crucial elements for the competitiveness of a territory. Public–Private–Partnerships (PPPs), in particular, allow for the provision of goods and services that favour the exploitation of complementarities between public and private resources. They aim at promoting an increase in the overall efficiency of investment projects through a complex mechanism that distributes risk and revenues among stakeholders. This paper examines the local and territorial determinants of PPPs through an econometric analysis based upon Italian municipal data, grouped at the provincial level. Using a tobit model, we analyse the relationship between the realization of successful PPP initiatives and different sets of factors, including less analysed local and territorial determinants. We stress the role of the local management of infrastructure assets, the administrative efficiency of local authorities and the diffusion of previous local development initiatives. Local management and territorial context factors explain most of the occurrence of successful PPP initiatives in the pre-crisis period while usual determinants (infrastructure endowment and financial distress) display a weaker effect.This work was supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) through the Fund for Research Projects of National Interest (PRIN) [Grant Project Number 2008PP5E98].Published versio

Positive forces and vicious mechanisms behind innovative activity in a lagging region

Literature about economic growth of less developed regions is traditionally concentrated on problems related to gaps and on the ways by which such regions might “run after” or even catch-up the more advanced economies. In these approaches, therefore, the central issue very often consists in the application of growth models constructed on the experiences of development. On the other hand, pure literature on development refers mainly to Third World realities and deals essentially with problems linked to economic and social development of low income countries. Last but not least, traditional literature about technological change generally analyses growth processes of industrialised countries and aims at identifying general patterns and models that, however, reflect the success cases they are build upon. However, in the last decades theoretical frameworks considering the role of “system” variables and mechanisms have provided some interpretative guidelines that seem useful to catch some aspects of the innovation processes taking places in lagging regions. In this paper, therefore, through an empirical approach it is verified if “context” variables are relevant for innovative activity in a lagging self-contained region (i.e. Sicily)