We provide a general framework in which to determine the optimal penalty fee inducing the contractor to respect the contracted delivery date in public procurement contracts (PPCs). We do this by developing a real option model that enables us to investigate the contractor's value of investment...

This paper considers the supplier’s strategic delivery lead time in a public procurement setting as the result of the firm’s opportunistic behavior on the optimal investment timing. In the presence of uncertainty on construction costs, we model the supplier’s option to defer the...

Participation of small businesses in the market for public contracts is widely recognized as a key policy issue. It is also commonly held that the adoption of e-procurement solutions can be effective in pursuing such an objective. To this end, we analyze the transactions completed in the period...

To date, border adjustment measures in the form of emissions allowance requirements (EAR) under the U.S. proposed cap-and-trade regime are the most concrete unilateral trade measure put forward to level the carbon playing field. If improperly implemented, such measures could disturb the world...

This paper compares different just transition pathways in China, the European Union and the United States of America by comparing the current state of the coal sector and just transition policies away from coal. How can social justice in the energy transition be achieved under different models...

Defining what Sustainability and Sustainable Development mean is a critical task, as they are global objectives, which cover different aspects of life often difficult to quantify and describe. Talking about sustainable development means dealing with the development and implementation of SD...

Drawing on the real-options theory we analyse bidding behaviour in a sealed-bid-first-score procurement auction where suppliers, facing variable production costs, must simultaneously report the contract price and the cost level at which they intend to perform the project. We show that this award...

Time overruns are common in public works and are not confined to inherently complex tasks. One explanation advanced in this paper is that bidders can undergo unpredictable changes in production costs which generate an option value of waiting. By exploiting the real-option approach, we examine...

This paper presents an application of a multi-attribute aggregation methodology to the construction of a sustainability index. Sustainability is a multi-faceted issue, in which synergies or conflicts may arise among the different components, thus making it a complex concept to which multi...

Implementing an effective climate policy is one of the main challenges for our future. Even though ambitious mitigation targets are necessarily costly, curbing GHG emissions can prevent future irreversible impacts of climate change on human kind and the environment. Climate policy is therefore...