One policy that is believed to increase the rate of innovation and the level of productivity is to move from Design-bid-build contracts (DBB) to Design-Build contracts (DB). A common view is that the latter provides the contractor more degrees of freedom to enable innovation. This hypothesis...

Earlier theoretical models of unbalanced bidding in unit price contracts (UPC) ofter predict corner solutions, i.e. zero bids for unit prices of expected overextimated quantities. However, anecdotal evidence indicates a lack of zero bids in the actual contracts. We pursue a possible explanation...

The aim of this paper is to propose a new structure for classifying contract types and payment methods. Concerning the procurement contract types the first important feature is the stepwise structure with three main steps in the contract design: (1) should the contract only include construction...

The first aim of this paper is to clarify the meaning of moral hazard in the context of construction procurement. Two important points are that typically there is a double moral hazard problem, as the client also can “misbehave” in a number of ways, and that both internal moral hazard...

In this comment it is argued that Christophers´ misunderstands the nature of the post war housing model in Sweden. This was actually a market friendly model where rent and price regulations were seen as something temporary and that an increase in supply was the most important policy. It is...

The standard view is that rent regulation leads to reduced maintenance as the landlord will be able to find tenants at the regulated rent even if the level of maintenance is low. In this article it is shown that the rent regulation system in Sweden interacts with a contract structure where the...

A large part of the Swedish housing stock was built between 1955 and 1975 and there is currently a large need for renovations. In this article the focus is on apartment renovations in cooperative housing where the individual owner of the apartment is responsible for renovations. Lack of...

It has been reported that productivity development in the construction sector has been very low compared to other sector. Measuring productivity is however not easy and it might have been underestimated due to deficiencies in the index that is used when the value added in current prices is...

The first part of the study concerns the concept ”sustainable renovation”. Four parts are identified and then used in the case study: environmental sustainability (including energy efficiency and choice of materials); social sustainability (interpreted as that the current tenants should be...