It was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who wrote that U.S. states serve as “laboratories of democracy” where new approaches to public policy are debated, adopted and tested. It turns out that states also serve as laboratories for formulating the best ways to employ public-private partnership (P3) transactions. In a country of tinkerers, inventors and dreamers, the prospect of building a better P3 model is leading to innovation but also frustration, and anyone entering the market needs to understand this dynamic.

Infrastructure investors have a number of research reports and other papers available to help them make informed decisions, and with the markets in such a high state of flux recently, new information is all the more valuable. One of the latest reports available to infrastructure investors is Building Infrastructure into the Portfolio: The Road to Performance & Diversification, by U.K.–based John Howell & Co. and commissioned by AXA Private Equity.

Howard Roth is global and Americas leader of real estate with Ernst & Young. He has more than three decades of experience, including extensive work with real estate private equity funds, domestic and offshore real estate investment trusts, and construction firms. He coordinates the firm’s activities across a broad array of related services around the world, including the Ernst & Young and Urban Land Institute’s annual infrastructure survey and report. Institutional Investing in Infrastructure senior editor Drew Campbell spoke with Roth about the 2010 report — Infrastructure 2010: Investment Imperative.