Public Private Partnerships, or PPPs, are being increasingly preferred by governments across the world for filling the infrastructure deficit, as they are claimed to provide access to private capital, and bring private sector efficiencies in provisioning of public services. In India too, a distinct policy shift towards PPPs in various sectors has been observed accompanied by a high degree of reliance on such partnerships to upscale the transport infrastructure. A growing body of literature however reveals serious flaws in the claims of economic superiority, effectiveness and profitability of the PPPs. They are being questioned on various accounts of transparency, accountability, equity, and excessive profiteering by the private partners. This gives rise to an advocacy for the enhanced role of the State in governance of PPPs. In this background, this research explores the nature of division of roles and responsibilities, allocation of risks and sharing of benefits by the State and the private partners within the PPPs in the context of road transport sector in India. It further examines the extent of investment of resources by the private partners in the projects. The factors shaping PPPs in road transport in India are also examined. This research suggests measures to strengthen the structures and mechanisms within the public and private partners to improve public infrastructure within the PPP framework. In order to achieve the research aims, and to gain a deeper perspective of the governance issues of PPPs from different administrative levels, two national and two state highways (one in construction while the other in operational stage in both cases) along with an intra-city transport project, part of which is already operationalised, were selected for the study. This study is rooted in critical realism according to which understanding of any social phenomenon can be achieved through study of the underlying multi-layered structures and mechanisms which cause the phenomenon. Research findings reveal that while PPP projects in highways largely followed the theoretical model of PPPs, the urban transportation project was found to be substantially deviating from a general PPP model discussed in the literature due to the unique requirements of urban transport infrastructure in India. The widely accepted argument of PPPs bringing in private capital to public services has been debunked by the Ahmedabad Bus Rapid Transit System (ABRTS). The project is substantially funded by the national and state governments due to limited incentives for the private sector to invest in these projects under BOT mode. The under-developed capability within the private sector in urban transportation projects in India resulted in unbundling of services rather than one private agency providing all of them. The local urban body has retained several risks as it more suitably located to bear them more efficiently. In the PPPs in highways, the public partner has shifted many of its responsibilities to the concessionaire primarily due to shortage of adequate manpower with the public partner, and the incentive of timely completion of the project with the private partner. Adoption of the PPP mode in highways has not been able to avoid time and cost over-runs, largely due to the public partners not meeting their share of responsibilities. Land acquisition has emerged as the single most contentious issue of PPPs in infrastructure in India and is the major cause for delay in PPP projects. In addition, serious issues in land-grabbing and profiteering by the private partners have also been observed. A more active role of the State in PPPs is suggested to improve the delivery of public services through the PPP mode. This may require establishing additional structures and mechanisms of governance to meet the emerging requirements of these new modes of procurement, and to strengthen the existing ones.

The major aim of the study was to examine the short and long-run relationships and directional causality flow between road transport infrastructure development and economic growth in Namibia for the period 1990-2014. To achieve this objective, the study adopted the auto regression distributive lag (ARDL) Bounds testing approach to co-integration, to examine the short-run and long-run relationship between economic growth and transportation infrastructure in Namibia. The data was sourced from the World Bank Database on GDP from 1990 to 2014, the Namibia National Planning Commission MTEF (Medium-Term Expenditure Framework from 1990-2015) and the Roads Authority Annual Reports from 1999 to 2014, which were imported into the E-view tool to run quarterly regressions from 1990 - 2014. The results confirm a relationship among the variables. The Bounds test results indicated that there exists a long-run relationship among the variables under study. The estimated long-run model showed that there is a statistically insignificant positive relationship between expenditure on road transport and economic growth as well as between information communication technology and economic growth in Namibia. However, the short-run model revealed a positive and statistically significant relationship between expenditure on road transport and economic growth. Conversely, both the long-run and short-run estimates showed a statistically insignificant and negative relationship between foreign direct investment and economic growth. Lastly, the Granger causality test results showed no causality between expenditure on road transport and economic growth in Namibia. The present study offers fresh insights to policy makers on crafting appropriate policies to regulate tax consolidation revenue and infrastructure levies collection; secondly, to boost public sector borrowing on international capital markets through bond issues, infrastructure funds and revenue bonds; thirdly, to develop partner financing business models through sector budget support; fourthly, to secure private sector financing through a private debt, private equity or capital structure leveraging business model; and lastly, implementing fast-tightened fiscal and monetary policy measures on foreign direct investment which currently severely affect Namibian capital outflows.

Several huge transport infrastructure projects have been implemented in the Scania region, Sweden, during the last two decades and more are on the way. The reasoning for constructions such projects usually include direct benefits on commuting cost savings and indirect impacts on agglomeration economies and, therefore, productivity in the region. While there is a consensus between researchers about the agglomeration impact on productivity, the effect of different types of transport infrastructure resulted in the heterogeneous estimates, varying both by sign and magnitude and  strongly depending on context. The aim of this thesis is to enrich the existing discourse with the new empirical evidence from Scania and answer the questions: What effect does agglomeration economies measures have on productivity in Scania? What effect do different types of physical transport infrastructure have on productivity in Scania?  What elasticities different types of transport infrastructure have in regards to productivity? The result of the research confirms the impact of employment density, specialisation, knowledge spillovers and urban amenities on productivity in Scania which is in line with previous research. Moreover, there is a significant negative effect of road-kilometres density (-0.0365) and positive effect of bus infrastructure in the form of service provision (0.0235). Railways show positive and significant effects as well in the form of distance to railway station (0.0327), but the data for this variable and therefore estimates could be improved. The thesis ends with the discussion of the results, limitations and possible policy implications.