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The Highway Concession System in Italy : History, Regulation and Politics

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2011-02-01
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2011-02-01
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This paper contains a critical discussion of the opening of the highway concession to the private sector in Italy over the past 20 years. It describes the political context, legal mechanisms and regulatory settings; offers an analysis of the changes in the equity composition of concessionaires after the introduction of public-private partnerships, quality standards, and tariff dynamics; and provides some examples. The Italian experience reflects the typical problems of the "build-now-regulate-later" approach recognized in the highway public-private partnership literature. The Italian model is also characterized by the existence of an overly complex regulatory framework, as well as the lack of a single agent in charge of contract enforcement and independent data collection.
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Limodio, Nicola. 2011. The Highway Concession System in Italy : History, Regulation and Politics. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5567. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3333 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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