Behavioral aspects of decisionmaking under centrally planned state pricing in construction

The subject of this article is the economic relations of investment activity subjects that have been formed during the implementation of state-­funded investment projects. The objects of research are representatives of contracting organizations that are part of the subjects of such relations, on the one hand, who have the opportunity to extract super profits through unjustified enrichment, and on the other hand, who risk losing their business due to the lack of stability of orders in the process of competing with other participants in public procurement, which is not always fair. The hypothesis of a systematic study of this contradiction determines that the key condition for the unjustified enrichment of the beneficiaries of contracting organizations is the permanent gap between government rates and market prices for construction and installation work. The study revealed two, on the one hand, self-sufficient, on the other hand, interrelated factors that generate pricing problems: information asymmetry in the market of investment goods in the public procurement segment and the paradoxical behavior of economic agents in the context of attempts to make pricing processes transparent. As a result of the experiment, it was revealed that the unification of price parameters and increasing their openness are not supported by contractors. Standard economic models that assume that rational actors maximize utility and respond to economic incentives do not explain this phenomenon. At the same time, contractors report that transparent pricing will reduce their profitability, but they are interested in “market regulation,†and this contradiction indicates that psychological mechanisms, rather than economic rationality, drive their decisions. The purpose of this study is to form scientifically sound proposals for improving the pricing system in the market of investment goods, taking into account the psychological aspects of the rational behavior of economic agents. The research is of applied importance for the development and implementation of digital tools in order to increase transparency in the market. The scope of the research is the state investment policy.