This document (of 147 pages) contains the proceedings of a one-day roundtable on competition issues relating to government procurement, held at the OECD in June 1998. The publication includes submissions from 12 OECD member countries describing the regulatory regime for procurement and the...

Public procurement markets differ from all others because quantities do not adjust with prices, but are fixed by the bidding authority. As a result, there is a high incentive for organizing cartels (the price elasticity of demand is zero below the base price) that are quite stable because there...