“…The project, whose technical and functional features are clearly de…ned and veri…able, requires a sunk investment of I and then a …xed O&M cost per unit of time (say, per annum) denoted as c. For technical convenience, we assume that construction can be instantaneously carried out, that the infrastructure has an in…nite life and that, once implemented, the project will provide a perpetuity of annual public non-…nancial bene…ts, valued at b, above and beyond those accruing to direct users. 3 We shall assume that the government (she) is able to commit at time t = 0 to a takeit-or-leave-it contract o¤er to a …rm (he), having no outside option, including the following terms and conditions. 4 First, the contract gives the …rm the responsibility for building the facility at the time foreseen by the government and then maintaining and operating it all along the contract period which is assumed to be long enough to be approximated as in…nite.…”