Infrastructure Project Finance and Investment Management: Bankability, Risk Allocation, and Capital Recycling

ABSTRACT

This paper surveys infrastructure project finance and investment management through the organizing concept of bankability. It explains how long‐lived, capital‐intensive and politically exposed infrastructure assets are transformed into financeable projects and investable claims through special‐purpose vehicles, contractual risk allocation, cash‐flow controls, public support, credit structuring and capital recycling. The survey connects project‐finance practice with economic questions in incomplete contracting, public‐private risk sharing, financial intermediation, institutional investment, energy transition and ESG risk management. It argues that infrastructure finance is best understood not as a simple public‐versus‐private funding choice, but as a system for allocating construction, revenue, political, operating, currency, refinancing and ESG risks to parties able to manage, absorb or price them. The paper concludes with a research and practitioner agenda on bankability measurement, debt capacity, secondary markets, blended finance, and climate‐resilient infrastructure investment.