The purpose of this article is to propose a mechanism – the hurdle-lowering auction – for leveraging the public funds invested in public/private partnerships to promote technology. The article addresses financial engineering – the optimal amount and design of public funding of privately performed investments in technology and innovation carried out by public/private partnerships. Public/private partnerships are joint research ventures combining public and private resources to invest in the research and development of technology and innovations. Thus, financial engineering concerns the design of mechanisms for public funding of public/private partnerships that generate the maximum leverage of the public funds on the private investment and performance. By maximum leverage of public funding, is meant maximum effectiveness of the funds in ensuring the use of the least amount of public funds to get the desired results and ensuring the necessary incentives to get those results given the appropriate amount of public funding.

This paper provides case studies for 14 research and development projects funded in 13 New England companies by the Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The performance of the six Fast Track projects, each conducted by a different company, is compared with the performance of eight non-Fast Track projects.

This paper explains the use of cost-benefit analysis for the evaluation of global public–private partnerships that combine international intergovernmental organizations with national governments, businesses, and the non-profit organizations of civil society. The partnerships allocate resources to projects that are socially desirable from an international perspective, yet without the global partnerships will not be performed. Cost-benefit analysis can identify and compare the social and the private costs and benefits of the projects, thereby identifying cases where global public–private partnerships will provide socially desirable results when markets alone will not. Cost-benefit analysis can assess the necessity and the sufficiency of strategies proposed by the partnerships. The paper discusses modifications to cost-benefit analysis required for its use in evaluations of the global public-private partnerships, explaining the need for market-centered valuations, but also explaining the role of alternative social valuations.