We study the effects of politics on public procurement in Swedish municipalities in 1990-98 using data on cleaning services. No procuring municipality committed to a standard auction format or to an explicit scoring rule. Political identity of the governing party is not correlated with the...

We compare beauty contests with first-price sealed-bid and scoring auctions, using data on public procurement of cleaning services in Swedish municipalities. The lowest submitted and winning bids are similar in all auction designs despite a higher price sensitivity of procurement bureaucrats in...

A well-functioning bureaucracy is a precondition for efficient public goods provision. However, bureaucratic decision-making is still largely seen as a black box. We provide novel insights into the preferences of bureaucrats regarding their work outcomes. We focus on a major public sector...