Public-Private Partnerships in Europe - Before and During the Recent Financial Crisis

This paper offers an updated description of the macroeconomic and sectoral significance of PPPs in Europe - without assessing PPPs from a normative perspective. Builidng on Blanc-Brude et al. (2007), it looks at the evolution of PPPs in the EU, with a particular focus on the recent financial crisis. In 2009, PPP transactions stood at EUR 15.8 billion; a decrease of almost 50% compared to 2007. The total value of closed deals has declined more than the number of deals. At the same time, the PPP market in Europe continues to diversify across countries and sectors. In 2008, the UK share in the total number of EU-PPPs fell below 50%. In many respects, however, the reduction in the European PPP market observed during the financial crisis can be seen as a reversal of an extraordinary spike in the years preceding the crisis.Public-Private Partnerships; Europe; PPP

COMPOSITION OF PUBLIC INVESTMENT AND FISCAL FEDERALISM: PANEL DATA EVIDENCE FROM EUROPE

We present some stylised facts about the composition of public investment in Europe and analyse its determinants, with a special focus on the role of fiscal decentralisation. The empirical analysis is conducted both for levels of different types of public investment and for their shares in total public investment. The results suggest that fiscal decentralisation boosts economically productive public investment, notably infrastructure, and curbs the relative share of economically less productive public investment, such as recreational facilities. While not readily reconcilable with the traditional theory of fiscal federalism, especially as regards the provision of local public goods, these findings can be interpreted in terms of the literature on fiscal competition, with not only tax rates but also the quality of public expenditure weighing in firms' location decisions.Public investment; fiscal decentralisation; Europe

Infrastructure finance in Europe: Composition, evolution and crisis impact

This article is the first attempt to compile comprehensive data on infrastructure finance in Europe. We decompose infrastructure finance by institutional sector (i.e. public versus private) into its main components, which consist of traditional public procurement, project finance and finance by the corporate sector, and analyse how the roles of the public and private sectors in financing infrastructure have evolved over time, especially during the recent economic and financial crisis. In contrast with government finance that is slightly up, private finance, in particular project finance through Publi-Private Partnerships, has fallen substantially during the recent crisis, reversing, at least temporarily, the longer-term trend of more private and less public financing of infrastructure.Infrastructure investment; Public-Private Partnerships; Project finance; Crisis impact

Results on Normal Forms for FPU Chains

In this paper we prove, among other results, that near the equilibirum position, any periodic FPU chain with an odd number N of particles admits a Birkhoff normal form up to order 4, whereas any periodic FPU chain with N even admits a resonant normal form up to order 4. This resonant normal form of order 4 turns out to be completely integrable. Further, for N odd, we obtain an explicit formula of the Hessian of its Hamiltonian at the fixed poin