When procurement contracts are awarded through competitive tendering participating firms commit ex ante to fulfil a set of contractual duties. However, selected contractors may find profitable to renege ex post on their promises by opportunistically delivering lower quality standards. In order...

type="main" <p>We study the effect of a new university in a two-city model in which individuals’ utility depends on own ability, peer group ability, formal education and mobility costs. We compare a monopoly (one university in one city) with a two-university system (one university in each city)....</p>

We show that capitalization of local education into the housing price induces childless voters to support local education. In particular, low income childless households vote for a tax raise when capitalization is strong, whereas high income childless supports a higher tax when capitalization is...

Empirical results show that children from high income households achieve higher levels of education and are more likely to be enrolled in post compulsory school. Theoretical findings fail to answer clearly whether greater public investment in the higher education system effectively decreases the...

It is shown that, in a dynamic competition, an exogenous horizontal merger is profitable even if a small share of active firms merge. However, each firm has incentive to remain outside the merger because it would benefit more (Insiders’dilemma). We show that in an infinite repeated game in...

Empirical and theoretical studies show that the local provision of public education affects the well being of individuals through two channels: the first reflects the direct use of the good, whereas the second runs through the value of the housing. The second effect leans on the idea that the...

We show how repeatedly awarded procurement contracts where unverifiable quality dimensions are relevant can be reinterpreted as relational contracts between a buyer and a contractor that is threatened by a potentially less efficient competitor. We compare two scenarios: 1) Under freedom of...

Theory fails to predict clearly whether a greater public investment in the higher education system effectively decreases the inequality between the educational attainment of rich and poor students. It is assumed that a rich student enrolled at a university receives a monetary transfer from his...

We introduce merging strategies and endogenous MQS, borrowed from Ecchia and Lambertini (1997), in Scarpa (1998). MQS induces the low-quality firm to exit the market and leads to a monopoly arising from the bilateral merger of the high-quality firms

We analyze the welfare effect of allowing a new university in a local area where another university is already operating. We use a two-city model in which individuals, whose education depends on the average peer ability (peer group effect), can sort across cities by facing a mobility cost. Com-...