Douglass North, along with Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, transformed the early intuitions of new institutional economics into powerful conceptual and analytical tools that spawned a robust base of empirical research. NIE arose in response to questions not well explained by standard...

This paper focuses on how to deal with environmental problems, through the lenses of the New Institutional Economics. The emphasis is on the intertwined role of organizational solutions and their institutional settings. This is not to say that technological solutions to environmental problems...

A comparative analysis of alternative contractual solutions is now required by the law, in France, to legitimize the choice of a Public-Private Partnership. This procedure is identified as "evaluation préalable" (preliminary evaluation). A central question then becomes that of the foundations...

The central message conveyed in this chapter is that there is a whole class of economic organizations that contribute substantially to what Coase (1992) called "the institutional structure of production". These arrangements fall neither under pure market relationships nor within 'firm...

This paper is about the alignment of technology and modes of organization in infrastructures in the context of their reform. Since infrastructures are characterized by strong technical complementarities, we explore the resulting 'critical technical functions' that need to be performed in order...

How are extra costs resulting from the occurrence of unanticipated risks allocated in a procurement setting? This paper develops a theoretical framework combining transaction cost economics with equity theory in order to explain why parties endorse cooperative strategies, basically a 50-50...

This chapter aims to provide some answers using both theoretical considerations as well as practical illustrations at the sub sectoral levels of urban water supply and irrigation as well as at the water sector as a whole. It examines different possibilities to deal with governance issues...

Our chapter is organized as follows. Section I comes back to the characteristics of the water sector. It describes some key features that may explain the slow pace of reform and that may also help better understanding characteristics and limits of that process. Then, a historical and global...

Contract enforcement is acknowledged as a major issue in Law and in Economics. Contrasting substitution and complementary perspectives with respect to the role of private versus public enforcement institutions, this article analyses how contract law can support private institutions, and enhance...

Public-Private Partnership has been high on the agenda of public decision makers since the 1990's. Primarily a contractual approach to the delivery of infrastructures, goods and services traditionally provided by the public sector or by private operators submitted to tight regulation, PPP is...