IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v40y2002i2p213-230.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Collusion in Procurement Auctions: an Experimental Examination

Author

Listed:
  • Douglas D. Davis

    (Dept. of Economics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284-4000.)

Abstract

Experimental methods are used to examine the existence and detectability of collusion in environments that exhibit critical parallels to procurement auctions. We find that given the opportunity sellers often raise prices considerably. Moreover, noncollusive Nash equilibrium predictions are insufficient to dismiss "suspicious" behavior as innocuous: in an environment where identical prices are predicted in a noncollusive Nash equilibrium, common prices are observed only when sellers communicate. In a second environment designed to parallel construction procurement contracting, market rotations are observed both with and without collusion, but collusion can often be detected from the pattern of losing bids. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglas D. Davis, 2002. "Collusion in Procurement Auctions: an Experimental Examination," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(2), pages 213-230, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:40:y:2002:i:2:p:213-230
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Harrington, Joseph E. & Hernan Gonzalez, Roberto & Kujal, Praveen, 2016. "The relative efficacy of price announcements and express communication for collusion: Experimental findings," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 251-264.
    2. Dijkstra, Peter T., 2014. "Price Leadership and Unequal Market Sharing," Research Report 14013-EEF, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    3. Dijkstra, Peter T., 2015. "Price leadership and unequal market sharing: Collusion in experimental markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 80-97.
    4. Puzzello, Daniela, 2008. "Tie-breaking rules and divisibility in experimental duopoly markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 164-179, July.
    5. Dechenaux, Emmanuel & Mago, Shakun D., 2019. "Communication and side payments in a duopoly with private costs: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 157-184.
    6. Anthony M. Kwasnica & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2013. "Multiunit Auctions," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 461-490, July.
    7. Muren, Astri & Pyddoke, Roger, 2006. "Collusion without communication," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 43-54, March.
    8. John A. List, 2009. "The Economics of Open Air Markets," NBER Working Papers 15420, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    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:oup:ecinqu:v:40:y:2002:i:2:p:213-230. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.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.