Abstract
When governments contend with financial restrictions, they may form public–private partnerships (PPPs) to help fund projects. In these types of investments, private firms (i.e. concessionaires) develop public projects. The government supports the funding of these public projects by sharing the risk of future potential losses. To implement the risk-sharing mechanism, public administration could adopt a Minimum Revenues Guarantee (MRG) option for the concessionaire in the agreement. On the other hand, the government should monitor possible opportunistic morally hazardous behavior by private firms derived by fraudulent exercise of this option. This paper aims to evaluate a MRG option while considering both moral hazard and an adjusted version of the Real Option Approach (ROA). A threshold (i.e. barrier) to the project profitability evolution is applied, below which the concessionaire would lose their right to exercise the option. Identifying these factors should encourage private firms to pursue the best possible management performance and avoid moral hazard. This paper also proposes a numerical example to validate that private firms would have no advantage in conducting opportunistic behavior because such behavior would reduce the project value.
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Di Bari, A. A barrier real option approach to evaluate public–private partnership projects and prevent moral hazard. SN Bus Econ 1, 43 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43546-021-00042-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43546-021-00042-z