This paper is an empirical analysis of first-price sealed-bid procurement auctions in Sweden, with and without combinatorial bidding. The data comprises procurement auctions of identical contracts (road resurfacing) with identical bidders conducted under the same time period (2009-2011) in two...

Combinatorial procurement auctions enable suppliers to pass their potential cost synergies on to the procuring entity and may therefore lead to lower costs and enhance efficiency. However, bidders might find it profitable to inflate their stand-alone bids in order to favour their package bids....

Within the framework of the common value model, we examine the magnitude of the difference in expected outcome between first-price and second-price sealed bid auctions. The study is limited to two empirical specifications of bidders signals: Weibull and normal distribution. The optimal bid...