IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/201401.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Foreign bidders going once, going twice... Protection in government procurement auctions

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew T. Cole
  • Ronald B. Davies

Abstract

Until recently, government procurement bidding processes have generally favored domestic firms by awarding the contract to a domestic firm even if a foreign firm tenders a lower bid, so long as the difference between the two is sufficiently small. This has been replaced by an agreement abolishing this practice. However, the presence of other trade barriers, such as tariffs, can continue to disadvantage foreign firms. We analyze the bidding strategies in such a game and show that when domestic profits are valued, tariffs will be used to discriminate against foreign firms. Furthermore, we find that optimal tariffs can be more protectionist than the optimal price preference, resulting in lower expected domestic welfare and total surplus.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew T. Cole & Ronald B. Davies, 2014. "Foreign bidders going once, going twice... Protection in government procurement auctions," Working Papers 201401, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/5389
    File Function: First version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Miyagiwa, Kaz, 1991. "Oligopoly and Discriminatory Government Procurement Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1320-1328, December.
    2. Todd Kaplan & Shmuel Zamir, 2012. "Asymmetric first-price auctions with uniform distributions: analytic solutions to the general case," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(2), pages 269-302, June.
    3. McAfee, R. Preston & McMillan, John, 1989. "Government procurement and international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3-4), pages 291-308, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cole, Matthew T. & Davies, Ronald B. & Kaplan, Todd, 2017. "Protection in government procurement auctions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 134-142.
    2. Bernard Hoekman, 2015. "International Cooperation on Public Procurement Regulation," RSCAS Working Papers 2015/88, European University Institute.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matthew T. Cole & Ronald B. Davies, 2014. "Foreign Bidders Going Once, Going Twice… Protection in Government Procurement Auctions," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp441, IIIS.
    2. Marius BRÜLHART & Federico TRIONFETTI, 2000. "Public Expenditure and International Specialisation," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 00.23, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    3. Mulabdic, Alen & Rotunno, Lorenzo, 2022. "Trade barriers in government procurement," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    4. Cole, Matthew T. & Davies, Ronald B. & Kaplan, Todd, 2017. "Protection in government procurement auctions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 134-142.
    5. Chiara Carboni & Elisabetta Iossa & Gianpiero Mattera, 2018. "Barriers towards foreign firms in international public procurement markets: a review," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 45(1), pages 85-107, March.
    6. Chiara Carboni & Elisabetta Iossa & Gianpiero Mattera, 2017. "Barriers to Public Procurement: A Review and Recent Patterns in the EU," IEFE Working Papers 92, IEFE, Center for Research on Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    7. Barbosa, Klenio & Boyer, Pierre C., 2021. "Discrimination in Dynamic Procurement Design with Learning-by-doing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Vagstad, Steinar, 1995. "Promoting fair competition in public procurement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 283-307, October.
    9. Naegelen, Florence & Mougeot, Michel, 1998. "Discriminatory public procurement policy and cost reduction incentives," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 349-367, March.
    10. Evenett, Simon J. & Hoekman, Bernard M., 2005. "Government procurement: market access, transparency, and multilateral trade rules," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 163-183, March.
    11. Aaditya Mattoo, 1996. "The Government Procurement Agreement: Implications of Economic Theory," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(6), pages 695-720, November.
    12. Albert Breton & Pierre Salmon, 1996. "Are Discriminatory Procurement Policies Motivated by Protectionism?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(1), pages 47-68, February.
    13. García-Alonso, María D.C. & Levine, Paul, 2008. "Strategic procurement, openness and market structure," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 1180-1190, September.
    14. Deltas, George & Evenett, Simon, 2020. "Language as a barrier to entry: Foreign competition in Georgian public procurement," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    15. Jihui Chen & Maochao Xu, 2015. "Asymmetry and revenue in second-price auctions: a majorization approach," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 39(3), pages 625-640, July.
    16. Colucci, Domenico & Doni, Nicola & Valori, Vincenzo, 2012. "Preferential treatment in procurement auctions through information revelation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 883-886.
    17. Saar Golde & Asher Tishler, 2004. "Security Needs, Arms Exports, and the Structure of the Defense Industry," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(5), pages 672-698, October.
    18. Anirudh Shingal, 2015. "Econometric Analyses of Home Bias in Government Procurement," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 188-219, February.
    19. Michele Santoni, 2002. "Discriminatory Procurement Policy with Cash Limits," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 27-45, January.
    20. Ragoussis, Alexandros, 2016. "Government agoraphobia: home bias in developing country procurement markets," IDOS Discussion Papers 5/2016, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tariffs; Government procurement; Price preference;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201401. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicolas Clifton (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.