Contractual design and PPPs for hospitals: Lessons for the Portuguese model

Recently the Portuguese Government announced the launching of public-private partnerships (PPPs) to build hospitals with the distinctive feature that infrastructure construction and clinical activities management will be awarded to separate private parties. Also, one of the parties will be in charge of providing soft facilities. We explore alternative configurations of contracts and assess whether the equilibrium allocations attain the first-best solution. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.