From Traditional to Outcome-based Public-Private Partnerships: 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, whereby economic operators’ remuneration is based on their capacity to achieve service outcomes, thus improving contracting authorities’ ability to tackle specific social needs. Despite the different nuances, this chapter discusses whether SIBs can be regarded as a first step to testing the feasibility of linking the investors’ payment to outcomes and, therefore, as a scheme that could be extended to traditional infrastructure-based PPP contracts.