An Analysis of Protectionist First-Price Auctions

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30
Author(s):  
Winston T. H. Koh

The paper considers the following problem: One local firm and one foreign firm, each risk-neutral, bid to supply a government project, each knowing its cost, and knowing that the rival's cost is independently uniform on [0,1]. The government wishes to maximise the local surplus, defined as the sum of consumer surplus and the local firm's profit. The paper analyses the equilibrium bid strategies for the protectionist first-price auction, and shows that the protectionist first-price auction generates a larger local surplus compared with the protectionist second-price auction when rule-of-thumb discrimination is practised. The result provides another reason for the prevalence of sealed-bid auctions in government procurement.

2007 ◽  
Vol 09 (04) ◽  
pp. 719-730
Author(s):  
WINSTON T. H. KOH

In government procurement auctions, discrimination in favor of one group of participants (e.g. domestic firms, minority bidders) over another group is a common practice. The optimal discriminatory rules for these auctions are typically non-linear and could be administratively complex and costly to implement. In practice, procurement auctions are usually organized as sealed-bid first-price auction with a simple percentage price-preference policy. In this paper, we analyze a model with two bidders that draw their costs from a common uniform distribution, and derive an upper bound to the welfare loss resulting from the use of linear-price preference auctions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Eric Vincent C. Batalla

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to analyse the weaknesses of governance institutions in constraining grand corruption arising from the government procurement of large foreign-funded infrastructure projects in the Philippines. The weaknesses are revealed in the description and analysis of two major scandals, namely, the construction of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant during the Marcos era and the National Broadband Network project of the Arroyo presidency.Design/methodology/approachThis research employs a historical and comparative case approach to explore patterns of grand corruption and their resolution. Primary and secondary data sources including court decisions, congressional records, journal articles and newspaper reports are used to construct the narratives for each case.FindingsTop-level executive agreements that do not require competitive public bidding provide an opportunity for grand corruption. Such agreements encourage the formation of corrupt rent-seeking relationships involving the selling firm, brokers, politicians and top-level government executives. Closure of cases of grand corruption is a serious problem that involves an incoherent and politically vulnerable prosecutorial and justice system.Originality/valueThis paper aims to contribute to research on grand corruption involving the executive branch in the Philippines, particularly in the procurement of large, foreign-funded government projects. It examines allegations of improprieties in government project contracting and the politics of resolving corruption scandals through the justice system.


Author(s):  
Zhuoshu Li ◽  
Sanmay Das

We consider the problem of designing the information environment for revenue maximization in a sealed-bid second price auction with two bidders. Much of the prior literature has focused on signal design in settings where bidders are symmetrically informed, or on the design of optimal mechanisms under fixed information structures. We study commonand interdependent-value settings where the mechanism is fixed (a second-price auction), but the auctioneer controls the signal structure for bidders. We show that in a standard common-value auction setting, there is no benefit to the auctioneer in terms of expected revenue from sharing information with the bidders, although there are effects on the distribution of revenues. In an interdependent-value model with mixed private- and common-value components, however, we show that asymmetric, information-revealing signals can increase revenue.


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Maniam Kaliannan

The quest to improve the government service delivery is becoming an important agenda for most governments. The introduction oflCT in the public sector especially E-Government initiatives opens up a new chapter in the government administration throughout the world. Governments have deployed ICT to serve their citizens in an efficient and effective manner. This paper presents an empirical investigation of Malaysian government's e-Procurement initiative (locally known as e-Perolehan). The aim of the paper is to examine factors that influence the current and future use of the system within the supplier community. These factors are grouped in three perspectives, (i) organizational perspective; (ii) technological perspective; and (Hi) environmental perspective. The general consensus amongst both the buyer and seller communities is that e-procurement will become an important management tool to enhance the performance of supply chain especially in the public sector. However, before this occurs, the findings suggest that several issues must be addressed by the relevant authorities in light of the three perspectives as mentioned above, to improve the procurement process at the federal government level.


1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Walker ◽  
Vernon L. Smith ◽  
James C. Cox

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