Within the next decade several physical key infrastructures (e.g., telecommunications, transport, energy, water supply, and urban infrastructure) need to be modernised or newly built to sustain and enhance economic development and societal living conditions. Rolling-out new or modernizing and maintaining legacy infrastructure involves substantial investments.

Hitherto financing and provisioning infrastructure has been organised in many different ways from being managed by fully private to fully public institutions. In the light of large fiscal deficits in the EU and the US and the instability of financial markets, most governments are forced to implement severe austerity measures which leave little scope for necessary infrastructure investments which in turn are essential for economic development and growth.

Thus, the conference aimed at giving insights into new infrastructure provisioning models from different perspectives such as financing, regulation, and social policy. This went along with looking at the challenge of public and private engagement in public infrastructure provisioning as well as with an identification and exploration of global best practice examples for infrastructure provisioning that provide lessons learnt for contemporary discussions on how to efficiently provide infrastructure.

Edited by Picot A., Florio M., Grove N. and Kranz J., The Economics of Infrastructure Provisioning. The Changing Role of the State, 2015, MIT Press.