Engagement of private funds in investment on transport infrastructure is now established as aquite common instrument to accelerate its deployment and improve the efficiency of procurement. Inmost cases charges (tolls) applied to the users constitute the main part or the whole of the payback forinvestors. The corresponding stream of revenues is at risk from many sides, among which the overalleconomic development of the region and the evolution of societal preferences.Financial derivatives have been under-used to cover this type of risk, and this paper suggestsapplication of collar hedging contracts, by which the investor on the infrastructure is protected fromsignificant negative deviations of the revenue stream by accepting to abdicate from significant positivedeviations of that same revenue stream. Although it is possible to conceive over the counter trades forthis kind of hedging contracts, the unique nature of each infrastructure suggests that the market will notbe efficient.This problem can be circumvented by recourse to modelling, but the traditional models are toosimple to encompass the complexities inevitably present over a horizon of several decades, particularly inthe present period of high uncertainty over oil prices, car technologies and climate change. Systemsdynamics models are suggested for this role, as they naturally embed the mutual interactions and feed17backs that are present in the real world.This combination of hedging contracts and systems dynamics models should provide theframework for a more efficient handling of revenue risk in the contracts for tolled infrastructure.
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