Is a social empowerment of PPP for infrastructure delivery possible? Lessons from social impact bonds

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) have emerged in recent years as outcome-based public-private partnerships (PPP) for the delivery of welfare services, where the payment to the private operator is linked to the achievement of superior social impact. Since the traditional infrastructure-based PPP approach seems to have failed to achieve higher level of efficiency and, above all, effectiveness, this paper discusses the extent to which the SIB model can represent a reference point to innovate the PPP model by introducing more focus on outcome achievement and social value generation.