Public-private Partnership: Comparing the Russian and the European Experience
A research seminar on ‘Public-private partnership: design and discussion’ took place at the HSE campus in Perm. The event was organized by the Division of Public-Private Partnership Studies. Russian, as well as international researchers from Italy, Sweden, and Great Britain, spoke on topical problems of public-private partnership.
The seminar covered various aspects of public-private relations such as innovations and corruption in public procurement, motivation and efficiency of procedures, risks and limitations, and others.
Elisabetta Iossa, professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Marieke Huysentruyt, Assistant Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics gave keynote reports. Prof. Iossa spoke about the details of procurement in innovation projects, and Prof. Huysentruyt looked at the problems of values, organization and motivation for public-private partnership in the area of social products or services.
The participants from Italy and Great Britain shared some international experience of public-private partnerships and public procurement. Riccardo Camboni from the University of Verona spoke about the problem of favouritism in developing the rules for auctions, and Dmitry Vinogradov, professor at the University of Essex, co-authored with Elena Shadrina (HSE in Perm), presented a study dedicated to correlations between public services, social aid, and public-private partnership.
In their papers HSE representatives analyzed the problems of public-private partnership development in Russia. Scholars from the Moscow campus, Andrey Dementiev and Maria Ostrovnaya, spoke on organizational reforms in the public sector and the problems of favouritism in Russian auctions, accordingly.
The HSE campus in Perm was represented by three speakers. Svetlana Suslova told the audience about co-production in education. Sarah Busse-Spencer covered the social context of public organizations’ participation in Russia. Prof. Paola Valbonesi from the University of Padova, academic supervisor of the Division of Public-Private Partnership Studies, focused her research on the preferential regime for Russian small and medium-sized businesses in public procurement. Co-authors of this study were Elena Shadrina and Stas Zamesov, a student of the joint master’s programme of HSE in Perm and the University of Essex on ‘Business Strategies in Global Environment’.
The seminar attracted lively interest not only among the academic community, but also among professionals. For example, representatives of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, Grazia Sgarra and Giovanni Coletta, together with Giovanna Ottaviani, staff member of the Italian Institute of Statistics, spoke on financial limitations and risk distribution in public-private partnerships in Italy.
At the end of the seminar, the organizers thanked everyone for interesting and insightful papers, new ideas and thoughts. The participants, in their turn, said that the seminar would certainly become a good starting point for developing new projects and research in public-private partnerships.