Limited competition in public procurement remains a persistent concern, yet the reasons for low participation are not well understood. We conduct a conjoint survey experiment that targets both potential and actual bidders in Finland. We present real firms with hypothetical tender scenarios,...

We study the extent of a one-size-fits-all approach in the design of public procurement (PP) tenders using comprehensive data from Finland. We show that crucial PP design features related to auction and contract rules tend to have significant lack of variation across different tenders for...

Effective policy implementation is foundational to development and depends crucially on a competent and committed bureaucracy. Bureaucratic failures can arise from both imperfect capabilities and incentive misalignment-dimensions of state capacity that often coexist and shape policy outcomes...

Public procurement in many European Union member states remains strongly priceoriented, often at the expense of delivery performance, innovation, and effective risk management. This study examines how the Best Value Approach (BVA) operates within a post-transition, legality-focused...

Approximately 42% of European public procurement contracts are awarded to a sole bidder. As this market represents about one-seventh of GDP in developed countries, any inefficiency is a first-order concern. This paper examines a Czech reform that prohibited awarding such single-bid contracts....

Governments support the green transition through green public procurement. Using US data, this paper provides the first empirical analysis of the causal effects of green contracts on corporate greenhouse gas emissions and economic performance. We focus on an affirmative program for sustainable...

We develop a method for detecting cartels in multistage auctions. Our approach allows a firm to be collusive when facing members of its cartel yet competitive when facing others. Intuitively, as initial bids are shaded, close initial bids not only imply similar costs but also provide an...