Optimal Bidder Participation in Public Procurement Auctions (original) (raw)

Comparing public procurement auctions

International Economic Review, 59(2), 391-419, 2018

This article contrasts two auction formats often used in public procurement: first price auctions with ex post screening of bid responsiveness and average bid auctions (ABAs), in which the bidder closest to the average bid wins. The equilibrium analysis reveals that their ranking is ambiguous in terms of revenues, but the ABA is typically less efficient. Using a data set of Italian public procurement auctions run alternately under the two formats, a structural model of bidding is estimated for the subsample of first price auctions and used to quantify the efficiency loss under counterfactual ABAs.

Do Auctions Improve Public Procurement? Evidence from the Czech Republic

DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, 2015

This paper explores the effect of various contract-awarding procedures in public procurement on the price of the contract. We provide a theoretical model that compares prices in different procedures and tests whether there is a significant price difference between the procedures using data from Czech public procurement. The model predicts that auctions are more efficient than negotiations given the same number of suppliers, and open procedures are more efficient than closed procedures if high-cost firms are selected for the closed procedure. In accordance with the first prediction, we find that open auctions are more efficient than open negotiations. Concerning the second prediction, we find that closed procedures are less efficient than open procedures, which suggests that procurers tend to select relatively more costly firms to participate in closed procedures. Comparing all four awarding procedures, we find that open auctions are the most efficient procedure used in the Czech Rep...

Improving the estimation of probability of bidder participation in procurement auctions

Anticipating the number and identity of bidders has significant influence in many theoretical results of the auction itself and bidders’ bidding behaviour. This is because when a bidder knows in advance which specific bidders are likely competitors, this knowledge gives a company a head start when setting the bid price. However, despite these competitive implications, most previous studies have focused almost entirely on forecasting the number of bidders and only a few authors have dealt with the identity dimension qualitatively. Using a case study with immediate real-life applications, this paper develops a method for estimating every potential bidder’s probability of participating in a future auction as a function of the tender economic size removing the bias caused by the contract size opportunities distribution. This way, a bidder or auctioner will be able to estimate the likelihood of a specific group of key, previously identified bidders in a future tender.

Entry and Subcontracting in Public Procurement Auctions

Management Science, Vol. 61, Iss. 12, pp. 2945–2962, 2015

We empirically study how the interplay between entry and subcontracting choices is affected by the use of different auction formats in public procurement. The difference-in-differences strategy used exploits a data set of auctions for public works run alternately under first price and average bid auctions. We find that the use of first-price auctions causes a marked decline in both entry and sub-contracting. We also find that the type of firms entering first price auctions changes with firms becoming more likely to bid jointly with other firms in ad hoc joint ventures.