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,...

The aim of this study was to investigate how the differences across the regional reimbursement mechanisms and in particular the use of the DRGs impact on the level in the high technology equipment diffusion.

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 paper investigates the efficiency of procurement for medical devices. Differentiation of products in this market, due to doctors' preferences for specific technologies, might reduce the number of suppliers and the potential positive impact of auctions relative to negotiations. Using a large...

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...

It is widely agreed that rules governing public procurement should be designed to achieve value for money. However, in the public works sector, ‘… the good being procured is usually complex and hard to be exactly specified <italic>ex ante</italic>, … [and] alterations to the original project might be...

Nowadays different healthcare policies in OECD countries seem to consider hospital readmissions somehow “quality dependent”. Nonetheless, the theoretical literature on the incentives provided by payment systems tend to disregard this aspect, which indeed might be relevant in driving...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of financial incentives on the level of inappropriateness in health care. The case of the Italian NHS seems to be especially interesting when considering the effects of financial incentives on providers' behaviors, as decentralization processes...