Are Public Private Partnerships value for money?
本文探讨公私合作伙伴关系(PPP)的物有所值评估问题,对比不同国家的评估方法,并促进学术界与实务界之间的对话。
In an earlier article in this journal (Grimsey, D., & Lewis, M. K. (2002b). Accounting for Public Private Partnerships. Accounting Forum, 26(3), 245–270), we examined the intricacies of the accounting issues raised by Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). It was argued that the critical accounting question from the public sector's viewpoint is not one of whether the arrangement is on or off balance sheet, but whether it represents good value for money. However, determining value for money for a PPP is an area in which, despite strong criticisms by a number of academic writers of the methods used by practitioners to evaluate value for money, surprisingly little engagement has taken place between the practitioners and the academics on the issues involved. This paper attempts to provide such an engagement. At the same time, because many of the academic critiques focus on the situation in one country (particularly the UK or Australia), we try to put matters into a broader, comparative context by considering approaches to value for money tests in a number of countries. Our examination is thus comparative in the sense of considering value for money tests in different countries, while also comparing the views of academics and practitioners.