In a wholly hypothetical portfolio of 120 infrastructure bonds, investors assign different prices to otherwise similar projects depending on who absorbs rising costs. Debt backed by contracts with annual price adjustments trades at an average yield of 5.1%, against 5.8% for fixed-price contracts. These are invented illustrations, not observed market quotations, and do not describe any actual security or trading opportunity.

The apparent advantage is not free protection. Adjustment clauses may contain caps, delays or exceptions, while customers can challenge increases through contractual review. In the model, introducing a 12-month collection delay erases roughly one-third of the valuation premium. The broader analytical point is that an asset's label reveals less than its cash-flow rules: owning essential infrastructure does not guarantee that revenue will keep pace with expenses.