This paper aims at analysing the procurement of public works paying attention to the level of government involved. Such an issue has not received so far attention in the literature on fiscal federalism nor in the public works procurement literature. We focus the attention upon the execution...

The efficiency of execution of public works contracts is usually defined in terms of the capacity to complete works within the costs and the time agreed on in the contract. Therefore, it has been traditionally measured considering either costs overruns or delays. Our purpose is to consider both...

The aim of this paper is to provide an empirical test of the role of competition in procurement in reducing the effects of corruption. For this purpose, the paper examines whether competition is able to constrain the waste effects of corruption on the efficiency of execution of public works,...

In the economic literature increasing attention is paid to the efficiency evaluation in the cultural sector. However, so far, the performance of archives is rarely investigated, notwithstanding their cultural and historical relevance. Indeed, the analysis of archives raises interesting...

The literature on public procurement pays great attention to the rules underlying tendering procedures as well as on the specification of the type of contract to be awarded. Less attention has been paid to the incompleteness of the contract; this issue is relevant in the public work sector...

Almost everywhere public intervention in cultural heritage (CH) conservation is widespread. Using Italy as a case study, the paper analyses public capital expenditure for CH conservation and investigates whether the high degree of specialization of contracting authorities affects the efficiency...

This paper aims at analysing the time performance of infrastructure procurement based on the characteristics of the contracting authorities involved. We focus on the execution stage, which is crucial for the efficient provision of public works and their planned benefits. An empirical analysis,...