Poorly functioning, and often corrupt, public procurement procedures are widely faulted for the low quality of infrastructure provision in developing countries. Can electronic procurement (e-procurement), which reduces both the cost of acquiring tender information and personal interaction...

The lack of flexibility in public procurement design and implementation reflects public agents' political risk adaptation to limit hazards from opportunistic third parties - political opponents, competitors, interest groups - while externalizing the associated adaptation costs to the public at...

Generic drugs comprise an increasing share of total prescriptions dispensed in the U.S., rising from nearly 50 percent in 1999 to 75 percent in 2009. The generic drug market has typically been viewed at the wholesale level as a competitive market with price approaching marginal costs. However,...

Deadlines and penalties are widely used to incentivize effort. We model how these incentive contracts affect the work rate and time taken in a procurement setting, characterizing the efficient contract design. Using new micro-level data on Minnesota highway construction contracts that includes...

I study the channels through which health insurance influences medical innovation. Following Medicare and Medicaid's passage, I find that U.S.-based medical-equipment patenting rose by 40 to 50 percent relative to both other U.S. patenting and foreign medical-equipment patenting. Within the...

We demonstrate Medicare's influence on private insurers' payments for physicians' services. Using a large administrative change in payments for surgical versus medical care, we find that private prices follow Medicare's lead. A $1 change in Medicare's fees moved private prices by $1.16. A second...

In public sector procurement, social welfare often depends on the time taken to complete the contract. A leading example is highway construction, where slow completion times inflict a negative externality on commuters. Recently, highway departments have introduced innovative contracting methods...

On January 1, 2006, the federal government began providing insurance coverage for Medicare recipients' prescription drug expenditures through a new program known as Medicare Part D. Rather than setting pharmaceutical prices itself, the government contracted with private insurance plans to...

The federal-state Medicaid program insures 43 million people for virtually all of the prescription drugs approved by the FDA. To determine the price that it will pay for a drug treatment, the government uses the average price in the private sector for that same drug. Assuming that Medicaid...

Procurement contracts are often incomplete because the initial plans and specifications are changed and refined after the contract is awarded to the lowest bidder. This results in a final cost to the buyer that differs from the low bid, and may also involve significant adaptation and...