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The primary purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the unsolicited proposal (USP) and the performance of private participation infrastructure (PPI) projects in developing countries.

The main data set for this study was collected from the World Bank database consisting of 8,951 PPI projects that occurred in developing countries from 1996 to 2020. Hierarchical logistic regression was applied for investigating the effects of USPs on project success. Three moderators, namely, control of corruption, presence of local sponsor and project size were also included in the model to test the impact of their interactions with the USP on the performance of PPI projects. Further, to assess the impact of the effect of USPs, the average marginal effect was calculated. The framework used in this study consists of 18 control variables, three moderators and one noncontrolled independent variable (the USP).

The results of hierarchical logistic regression indicate that USPs have a significant and negative effect on the success of PPI projects occurring in developing countries. The negative effect of a USP weakens with the presence of local sponsors and stronger control of corruption in the host country. However, contrary to the authors’ expectations, the results show that project size does not significantly affect the association between USPs and the success of PPI projects. Moreover, the results of average marginal effects show that the negative impact of USP on the success of PPI projects ranges between 2.4% and 3.8%.

This study quantifies the negative impact of USP on the success of PPI projects in developing countries, which will be helpful for the practitioners to understand the associated risk with USP projects. Furthermore, it also identifies the moderating roles of control of corruption and the presence of local sponsors on the relationship between USP and the success of PPI projects.

This paper delves into the ex ante rates of return demanded by the private sector in Indonesian public–private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects and the manifold factors emanating from project attributes that can influence these rates.

This paper analyzes feasibility studies of 37 PPP projects across different sectors. The studies were carefully selected based on relevance, completeness and validity of data. The analysis uses statistical techniques, including Levene’s tests, t-tests, ANOVA tests, Cohen’s effect size and Pearson correlations, to explore differences in cost of capital and excess returns across various attributes.

Based on the statistical analysis, no significant difference exists between the excess return of 200 basis points (bps) and the equity excess return of 0 bps. This suggests that the eligibility criteria for PPP projects require an internal rate of return (IRR) equal to the weighted average cost of capital plus 200 bps or an equity IRR equal to the cost of equity. The variations in the tested variables among diverse project attributes do not exhibit statistically significant disparities, even though specific attributes display moderate to high effect sizes.

This paper represents one of the first attempts to examine the rates of return demanded by the private sector in the context of Indonesian PPP projects. It comprehensively explores the factors that influence these rates, drawing on insights derived from feasibility studies.

The essence of finance has become essential in the sustainability discussion in recent times as a result of the capital intensive nature of sustainable projects. This has motivated financial experts and institutions to develop various financial instruments and mechanisms to further advance the course of protecting the environment, and decreasing the release of excess carbon and GreenHouse Gases. This is to also provide the opportunity for funding Green or sustainable infrastructure development. This chapter advances a discourse on matters relating to sustainable financing of infrastructure projects. The fundamentals of sustainable or green funding of infrastructure projects, and sustainable schemes of financing green infrastructure projects are discussed.

This paper aims to identify the factors affecting the implementation of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the education sector.

Based on Scopus and adopting the protocol of Staples and Niazi (2007), this systematic literature review examined 21 articles on PPPs in the education sector. Content analysis is adopted to identify research gaps and provide information on critical issues in the cases.

The findings have identified the critical success factors of PPPs in the education sector in 12 countries, revealing varying degrees of success and implementation challenges. They reflect the importance of clear objectives, effective communication, and robust partnerships between the public and private sectors to achieve success. These insights contribute to an in-depth understanding of PPP implementation in education, which can guide future projects.

The critical success factors identified in PPPs implementation in education across various countries may provide a comprehensive worldwide perspective for researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

Public–private partnership (PPP) projects play a pivotal role in fostering infrastructure development in developing countries. This study aims to identify major barriers and critical success factors (CSFs) for PPP projects in Vietnam.

The study initially conducted an extensive literature review and interviewed industry experts to compile a comprehensive list of barriers and success factors. Subsequently, a survey involving 250 construction professionals was conducted to assess these identified factors. The research used both ANOVA test and hierarchical regression analysis to explore the relationship between participants’ characteristics and assessments.

The results could provide a valuable reference for practitioners by assessing barriers and CSFs in PPP projects. Specifically, the ANOVA analysis indicated a positive correlation between barrier assessment and participants’ experience, while the influence of participants’ sector on the evaluation was minor. Furthermore, the hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that participants’ sector did not moderate the relationship between barrier assessment and industry experience.

This research contributes to the existing literature by offering empirical insights into barriers and CSFs specific to PPP projects in a developing country context. The findings highlight the crucial role of experienced professionals in ensuring PPP project success. Moreover, the study provides construction practitioners with a better understanding of the essential factors and supports the development of effective management strategies for future PPP projects.

The unprecedented SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has further constrained the budgets of governments worldwide for delivering their much-needed infrastructure. Consequently, public-private partnerships (PPPs), with the private sector's investment and ingenuity, would appear to be an increasingly popular alternative. Value for money (VfM) has become the major criterion for evaluating PPPs against the traditional public sector procurement and, however, is plagued with controversy. Hence, it is important that governments compare and contrast their practice with similar and disparate bodies to engender best practice. This paper, therefore, aims to understand governments' assessment context and provide a cross-continental comparison of their VfM assessment.

Faced with different domestic contexts (e.g. aging infrastructure, population growth, and competing demands on finance), governments tend to place different emphases when undertaking the VfM assessment. In line with the theory of boundary spanning, a cross-continental comparison is conducted between three of the most noticeable PPP markets (i.e. the United Kingdom, Australia and China) about their VfM assessment. The institutional level is interpreted by a social, economic and political framework, and the methodological level is elucidated through a qualitative and quantitative VfM assessment.

There are individual institutional characteristics that have shaped the way each country assesses VfM. For the methodological level, we identify that: (1) these global markets use a public sector comparator as the benchmark in VfM assessment; (2) ambiguous qualitative assessment is conducted only against PPPs to strengthen their policy development; (3) Australia's priority is in service provision whereas that of the UK and China is project finance and production; and (4) all markets are seeking an amelioration of existing controversial VfM assessments so that purported VfM relates to project lifecycles. As such, an option framework is proposed to make headway towards a sensible selection of infrastructure procurement approaches in the post COVID-19 era.

This study addresses a current void of enhancing the decision-making process for using PPPs within today's changing environment and then opens up an avenue for future empirical research to examine the option framework and ensuing VfM decisions. Practically, it presents a holistic VfM landscape for public sector procurers that aim to engage with PPPs for their infrastructure interventions.

This research has two primary goals: first, to develop a composite index that evaluates the degree to which Asian–Pacific economies are prepared to engage in public–private partnerships (PPPs), and second, to investigate the factors that have been most influential in the formation of PPP arrangements in the nations' infrastructure over the course of the period 1995–2016.

The study constructs sectoral and overall index of possible determinants of PPP. Subsequently, it examines each constructed index's role in PPP investment. The author also conducted a panel data analysis to understand the role of each of the potential determinants on PPP projects and investments. This paper analyzes the author’s empirical models using a range of cross-section and panel estimators, including Poisson, zero-inflated Poisson and fixed effect.

The study’s results based on cross-section analysis suggest that regulatory and institution quality, institutional arrangement and regulatory frameworks, financial market development and macroeconomic stability positively impact investment in PPP. Moreover, the results depict that financial market development has the most substantial impact on PPP investment, followed by macroeconomic stability and prior experience with PPPs. The panel data analysis shows that per-capita income, financial development, inflation, debt, resource import and fuel export are crucial determinants of PPP in Asian–Pacific economies.

Governments of the countries should promptly amend the important policies outlined in this study and adopt a more robust strategy to foster a competitive PPP environment. This will aid in maintaining transparency and gaining the confidence of investors. The study’s findings may assist policymakers in focusing on specific areas in need of improvement. Social welfare and industrialization are ultimately enhanced by the formulation of such policies and by attracting additional infrastructure investment.

This is the first attempt to rank countries on the basis of PPP enablers. Unlike previous studies, this study examines the role of a large number of indicators in determining PPP investment and projects in cross-section as well as panel data framework. The study also investigates the effects of PPP specific provisions and rules. Furthermore, the focus is specifically on Asian–Pacific countries, which are a mix of third-world, emerging, developing and developed countries. Focusing on Asia–Pacific is also crucial because the region is home to most of the world's population, and the region's infrastructure outcomes significantly impact their lives.

Undoubtedly, coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has released unprecedented disruptions and health crisis on people and activities everywhere. The impacts extend to public–private partnership (PPP) arrangements in the construction industry. Concomitantly, PPP pacts are contributing to combat the pandemic. However, literature on the PPP concept in the COVID-19 era remain under-researched. This study aims to review the current literature on PPPs in the COVID-19 pandemic and present the key themes, research gaps and future research directions.

In this study, 29 highly relevant literature were sourced from Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed search engines within the systematic literature review (SLR) methodology. With the aid of qualitative content analysis, the 29 articles were critically analysed leading to the extraction of hot research themes on PPPs in the coronavirus pandemic.

The results of the SLR produced eight themes such as major changes in PPP contracts, development of the COVID-19 vaccines, economic recession, facemasks and testing kits, governance and sustainability of PPPs. In addition, the study reveals seven research gaps that need further investigations among the scientific research community on mental health and post-pandemic recovery plans.

The articles selected for this review were limited to only peer-reviewed journal papers written in English excluding conference papers. This restriction may have taken out some relevant literature but they had insignificant impact on the overall outcome of this research.

To improve the understanding of practitioners in the construction industry on key issues on PPPs in the COVID-19 pandemic, the study provides them a checklist of relevant themes.

As a novel literature review relating PPPs to the coronavirus, it sets the foundation for further research and contributes to practical measures to control the virus.

This paper aims to highlight how the Greek State tried to improve public procurement processes during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and propose measures that could be implemented in a future force majeure event where the global supply chain will not operate efficiently.

The authors investigated the existing scientific literature. Afterwards, they designed a questionnaire to gather primary data and add value to the current literature.

The research paper results highlight that in future force majeure events, the best way for effective public procurement is to implement central procurement, framework agreements with more than one economic operator and use the newly established Public Buyers Community in the European Union. The questionnaire interviews also highlighted that payment terms could be adjusted to the needs of the suppliers to improve their financial flows, which are disrupted in case of a force majeure event.

One of the limitations of the present case study is that apart from the Greek procurement Laws and policy documents related to the COVID-19 pandemic, only scientific articles written in English were used by the authors in the literature review section.

The findings could benefit public contracting authorities and central procurement bodies when designing their processes in case of a force majeure event like the COVID-19 pandemic. As the public contracting authorities and the procurement officers are more informed about potential ways to improve the public procurement processes, they might apply measures that could facilitate the flexibility of the procurement processes.

The research paper can provide lessons learned to policy makers, when they have to cope with similar challenges in the future.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, no previous scientific article has examined how the Greek State has tried to respond to the supply shortages created during the pandemic. Furthermore, this is the first study in Greece that gathers primary data from public procurement practitioners.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the construction industry, it is still unclear from prior studies about adequately positioning the quality assurance (QA) for the post-pandemic era and future pandemics, especially cross-border construction logistics and supply chain (Cb-CLSC). Thus, this study aims to develop a managerial framework to position the QA of Cb-CLSC during pandemics and post-pandemics by taking lessons from how COVID-19 has impacted the existing QA systems and has been managed successfully.

This is achieved pragmatically through an embedded mixed-method design involving a literature review, survey and interview from experts within the Hong Kong SAR–Mainland China links, typically known as the world’s factory. The design is further integrated with the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.

The study revealed 10 critical managerial practices (MPs) to position the QA to be adequate for the post-pandemic and during future pandemics, with the top three including “strict observance of government regulations (MP1)”, “planning ahead the period of quality assurance with the quarantine days in host countries (MP6)” and “modification of contract to cater for uncertainties (MP4)”. This attained a relatively good percentage agreement of 53% between the industry and academia. However, the top four MPs regarded as very effective include “implementing digital collaborative inspections with subcontractors and trades (MP8)”, “implementing a digital centralized document and issue management system (MP7)”, “strict observance to government regulations, including vaccination of workers, social distancing, use of prescribed nose masks, etc. (MP1)” and “planning ahead the period of quality assurance with the quarantine days in host countries (MP6)”. Two underlying components of the MPs were revealed as policy-process (PP)-related practices and people-technology-process (PTP)-related practices, and these can be modelled into a managerial framework capable of effectively positioning the QA to be adequate during pandemics through to the post-pandemic era.

The findings of this study depicted significant theoretical and practical contributions to the proactive management of QA activities during pandemics through to the post-pandemic era. It could empower organisations to pay attention to smartly and innovatively balancing people, processes, pandemic policy and technology to inform decisions to effectively position the QA for the post-pandemic era and survive the risks of future pandemics.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge in that it develops a managerial framework to position the QA of Cb-CLSC during pandemics and post-pandemics by taking lessons from how COVID-19 has impacted the existing QA systems and has been managed successfully. It is original research with invaluable primary data in the form of surveys and interviews from experts within the Hong Kong SAR–Mainland China links, typically known as the world’s factory.