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Competition and collusion in a government procurement auction market

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  • Srabana Gupta

Abstract

This paper tests the structure performance hypothesis by examining a highway construction industry in Florida. In the first-price sealed bid auction literature, there is little evidence on how many bidders are required for these markets to be competitive. Two different indicators are used to capture the transition from collusion to competition—a discontinuous effect of the number of bidders on winning bid price, and an associative effect of repeat bidding of a contractor with the same set of firms. The results suggest that winning bids decrease as the number of bidders rises until there are about six to eight firms. Since subsequent entry has no effect on the winning bid price, it is concluded that the highway construction market becomes competitive with about eight bidders. Copyright International Atlantic Economic Society 2002

Suggested Citation

  • Srabana Gupta, 2002. "Competition and collusion in a government procurement auction market," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 30(1), pages 13-25, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:atlecj:v:30:y:2002:i:1:p:13-25
    DOI: 10.1007/BF02299143
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    Cited by:

    1. Blanchflower, David G., 2007. "Entrepreneurship in the United States," IZA Discussion Papers 3130, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. İlke Onur & Rasim Özcan & Bedri Taş, 2012. "Public Procurement Auctions and Competition in Turkey," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 40(3), pages 207-223, May.
    3. David Blanchflower, 2009. "Minority self-employment in the United States and the impact of affirmative action programs," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 361-396, June.
    4. Estache, Antonio & Iimi, Atsushi, 2009. "Auctions with endogenous participation and quality thresholds : evidence from ODA infrastructure procurement," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4853, The World Bank.
    5. Antonio Estache & A. Iimi, 2008. "Procurement Efficiency for Infrastructure Development and Financial Needs Reassessed," Working Papers ECARES 2008_022, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Tibor Neugebauer, 2007. "Bid and price effects of increased competition in the first-price auction: experimental evidence," LSF Research Working Paper Series 07-17, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    7. Atsushi Iimi, 2007. "Aid and competition in procurement auctions: a case of highway projects," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(7), pages 997-1015.
    8. Michael Beckmann, 2004. "Art Auctions and Bidding Rings: Empirical Evidence from German Auction Data," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 28(2), pages 125-141, May.

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