The paper studies competition for the market in a setting where incumbents (and, to a lesser extent, neighboring incumbents) benefit from a cost advantage. The paper first compares the outcome of staggered and synchronous tenders, before drawing the implications for market design. We find that...

We study the relationship between collusion and corruption in a stylized model of repeated procurement where the cost of reporting corrupt bureaucrats gives rise to a free riding problem. As in Dixit (2015, 2016), cooperation among honest suppliers alleviates free-riding in reporting. However,...

We explore empirically the impact of buyer quality on public procurement outcomes. Using purchases data (Federal Procurement Data System) and survey data (Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey) from US federal agencies, we find that procurement quality is highly heterogeneous across different...

To what extent does a more competent public bureaucracy contribute to better economic outcomes? We address this question in the context of the US federal procurement of services and works, by combining contract-level data on procurement performance and bureau-level data on competence and...

We study how funding agencies should set budget caps for competitive grants. We show that budget caps influence the researchers' submission strategy and, in particular, whether they steer their project choice towards the agencies' favorite projects, and the level of funds they request. The...

An extensive medical and occupational-health literature finds that an imbalance between effort and reward is an important stressor which produces serious health consequences. We incorporate these effects in a simple agency model with moral hazard and limitecl liability, and study their impact on...

We study the feasibility and profitability of predation in a parsimonious infinite-horizon, complete information setting where an incumbent may face an entrant, in which case it needs to decide whether to accommodate or predate it. If the entrant exits, a new entrant is born with positive...

We study the feasibility and profitability of predation in a dynamic environment, using a parsimonious infinite-horizon, complete information setting in which an incumbent repeatedly faces potential entry. When a rival enters, the incumbent chooses whether to accommodate or predate it; the...