Small Business Set-asides in Procurement Auctions: An Empirical Analysis
Abstract
As part of public procurement, many governments adopt small business programs to pro- vide contract opportunities for businesses often with preferences for firms operated by mem- bers of groups designated as disadvantaged. The redistribution arising from such programs, however, can introduce significant added costs to government procurement budgets. In this paper, the extent to which small business set-asides increase government procurement costs is examined. The estimates employ data on Japanese public construction projects, where approximately half of the procurement budget is set aside for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Applying a positive relationship between profitability and firm size obtained by the non-parametric estimation of asymmetric first-price auctions with affiliated private values, a counterfactual simulation is undertaken to demonstrate that approximately 40 percent of SMEs would exit the procurement market if set-asides were to be removed. Surprisingly, the resulting lack of competition would increase government procurement costs more than it would offset the production cost inefficiency.Download Info
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Paper provided by Economics, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba in its series Tsukuba Economics Working Papers with number 2009-005.Length:
Date of creation: Mar 2009
Date of revision: Nov 2009
Handle: RePEc:tsu:tewpjp:2009-005
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Postal: 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8571
Web page: http://www.econ.tsukuba.ac.jp/
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Jun Nakabayashi, 2010. "Small Business Set-asides in Procurement Auctions: An Empirical Analysis," Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series gd09-126, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
- D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Auctions
- H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
- H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement
- L74 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction - - - Construction
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2009-09-26 (All new papers)
- NEP-PPM-2009-09-26 (Project, Program & Portfolio Management)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease 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.:
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Hiroshi Ohashi, 2008.
"Effects of Transparency in Procurement Practices on Government Expenditure: A Case Study of Municipal Public Works,"
CIRJE F-Series
CIRJE-F-548, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
- Hiroshi Ohashi, 2009. "Effects of Transparency in Procurement Practices on Government Expenditure: A Case Study of Municipal Public Works," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 267-285, May.
- Klênio de Souza Barbosa & Pierre C. Boyer, 2011. "Competition for Local Public Services with Learning-by-doing and Transferability," Working Papers 06-2011, Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão Preto.
- Makoto HANAZONO & Jun NAKABAYASHI & Masanori TSURUOKA, 2013. "Procurement Auctions with General Price-Quality Evaluation," KIER Working Papers 845, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
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