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Procurement with Unforeseen Contingencies

Author

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  • Fabian Herweg

    (Faculty of Law, Business and Economics, University of Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth, Germany;)

  • Klaus M. Schmidt

    (Department of Economics, University of Munich, D-80539 München, Germany)

Abstract

A buyer who wants to procure a complex good is often aware that there may be flaws in her initial design, but she does not know what they look like. Potential sellers who discover flaws have no incentive to reveal them early if the buyer uses a price-only auction. We derive an efficient mechanism that induces all sellers to report flaws early and that allocates the project to the seller with the lowest cost. We show that this can be implemented with a simple two-stage auction that does not require any prior knowledge of the set of possible flaws.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabian Herweg & Klaus M. Schmidt, 2020. "Procurement with Unforeseen Contingencies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 2194-2212, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:66:y:2020:i:5:p:2194-2212
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3290
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Gretschko, Vitali & Pollrich, Martin, 2019. "Incomplete contracts in dynamic procurement," ZEW Discussion Papers 19-040, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    2. He Huang & Zhipeng Li & De Liu & Hongyan Xu, 2022. "Auctioning IT Contracts with Renegotiable Scope," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(8), pages 6003-6023, August.
    3. Vitali Gretschko & Martin Pollrich, 2022. "Incomplete Contracts in Multi-period Procurement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(7), pages 5146-5161, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    procurement; renegotiation; auctions; design flaws; adaptation costs; behavioral contract theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement

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