Öffentlich-private Partnerschaften und kommunale Verschuldung

The present paper examines whether there is a connection between the debt of a municipality and its tendency to implement infrastructure projects in the form of public-private partnerships. Similar to loans, public-private partnerships (PPPs) postpone public sector payment obligations into the future. It is therefore sometimes argued that local authorities misuse PPPs to disguise the true level of public debt. Municipalities that have already used the debt instrument intensively should then have a higher PPP tendency. The present paper does not find any reliable evidence for this. Employing data of the state of North Rhine-Westfalia the paper finds that municipalities with PPPs do in fact have higher levels of debt. In an econometric analysis, however, the effect of debt on the number of PPPs turns out to be insignificant and also quantitatively negligible.