In government procurement auctions of construction contracts, entrants are typically less informed and bid more aggressively than incumbent firms. This bidding behavior makes them more susceptible to losses a¤ecting their prospect of survival. In April of 2000, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation started releasing the internal cost estimates to complete highway construction projects. Using newly developed quantile regression approaches, this paper examines the impact of the policy change on aggressive entrants. First, we find that the information release eliminates the bidding differential between entrants and incumbents attributed to informational asymmetries. Second, we argue that the policy change a¤ects the prospects of survival of entrants in the market. We find that those who used to exit the market relatively soon are now staying 37 percent longer, while at the median level bidding duration increased by roughly 68 percent. The policy has the potential to encourage entry in government procurement auctions and thus increase competition.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
5236.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Auctions H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: