Public–Private Partnership Mechanisms in Financing Smart City Projects
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Hanna KOMARNYTSKA Department of Public Administration and Business Management, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine
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Oksana MARUKHLENKO Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University, Ukraine
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Nataliia PROTSIUK Department of Management, Economics, Statistics, and Digital Technologies, Leonid Yuzkov Khmelnytskyi University of Management and Law, Ukraine
This research paper addresses the critical challenge of financing Smart City infrastructure through the optimization of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mechanisms. As municipalities face increasing fiscal constraints, the transition to digital urban environments requires innovative capital allocation strategies that balance public oversight with private sector efficiency. Using a comparative, correlation, and cluster analysis framework, this research evaluates their capacity to mitigate information asymmetry and distribute financial risks. The findings indicate that well-structured partnerships serve as essential economic instruments for expanding 'fiscal space' and ensuring the long-term financial sustainability of urban digital transformations. The results offer evidence-based insights for policymakers in transitional economies seeking to bridge the infrastructure funding gap while maintaining macroeconomic stability.
Copyright© 2026 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Article’s History: Received 25th of January, 2026; Revised 27th of February, 2026; Accepted 24th of March, 2026; Available online: 30th of March, 2026. Published as article in the Volume XXI, Spring, Issue 2(92), March, 2026.
Prokopenko, O., Komarnytska, H., Iankovets, T., Marukhlenko, O., & Protsiuk, N. (2025). Public-Private Partnership Mechanisms in Financing Smart City Projects. Journal of Applied Economic Sciences, Volume XXI, Spring, 2(92), 659 – 676. https://doi.org/10.57017/jaes.v21.4(92).15
Acknowledgments/Funding: The authors received no financial or material support that could have influenced the results or their interpretation.
Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Ethical Approval Statement: This study does not involve human participants, personal data, or experimental procedures. All data used in the analysis are derived from publicly available secondary sources (e.g., EIB, OECD, Eurostat, World Bank, UN-Habitat) and aggregated project-level information. Therefore, ethical approval was not required for this research.
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