Determinants of contract choices in public-private partnershipsan application to the water industry

Résumé

This dissertation is structure in three interrelated chapters that aim at contributing on public-private governance issues regarding the three different streams of literature, namely New Public Management (chapter 1), International Business literature (chapter 2), and Institutional Economics (chapter 3). Finally , I provide a general discussion and overall conclusions. The reader may find that some paragraphs in different chapters overlap; the reason is that all three chapters have been written as independent pieces to be submitted to journals. Chapter 1 aims at setting a framework for analyzing the relationship between public and private organizations entering into PPPs within the context of cross-sector collaboration. Chapter 2 presents an empirical study that tries to apply the framework developed in the first chapter within the context of multinational water utilities entering developing countries. In particular, it analyses contract entry modes as the outcome of negotiation between multinational companies and host governments. In chapter 3, I examine the circumstances that lead PPPs to achieve superior performance in comparison with fully public service provision. In particular, address this question empirically by looking at how performance differs across fully public versus PPP water distribution for municipalities in Spain.