Does workload constitute a bottleneck to a public agency’s mission, and if so, to what extent? We ask these questions in the context of the US government’s procurement of R&D. We link tender, contract, patent, and office records to the identity of the officer responsible for the procurement...

The latest resurgence in the U.S. of policies aimed at reducing imports and bolstering domestic production has included the expansion of Buy American provisions. While some of these are new and untested, in this paper we evaluate long-standing procurement limitations on the purchase of foreign...

The latest resurgence in the U.S. of policies aimed at reducing imports and bolstering domestic production has included the expansion of Buy American provisions. While some of these are new and untested, in this paper we evaluate long-standing procurement limitations on the purchase of foreign...

This paper revisits the empirical analysis of Nakamura and Steinsson (2014). I reconstruct and extend the original dataset to cover the period 1966-2019, harmonizing two major sources of data: the Defense Contract Action Data System (DCADS) and USAspending.gov. I discuss how to aggregate these...

While public environmental law, regulation and governance have paved the traditional road towards environmental and natural resource protection, the pathway has been expanded to include a broader orbit of interest areas and regulatory tools in an effort to achieve sustainability. Through the...

Some U.S. local governments are leveraging public procurement to meet their sustainability goals. However, does the simultaneous pursuit of multiple sustainability objectives potentially slow down the speed of procurement processes? We suggest that the simultaneous pursuit of multiple...

This essay was written for inclusion in a volume about various European nations’ sources of authority and principles of procurement law (Les Principes des Contrats Publics en Europe, edited by Stephane de La Rosa and Patricia Valcarcel). It is not, however, an essay on comparative law. Rather,...

This paper aims to determine the extent to which corporate political contributions and the allocation of government procurement contracts are related. We gather information regarding the contributions made by 911 S&P500 companies in 9 congressional election cycles between 1993 and 2010, and...

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has commissioned a working group, with delegations from many industrialized and developing nations, to reform and update the UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services. The working group is currently...