Assessing Social Costs of Inefficient Procurement Design
利用瑞典道路油漆采购拍卖数据，估计了不对称竞标者下第一价格密封拍卖中合同分配低效导致的社会成本，约为总潜在生产成本的2%，并发现改用第二价格拍卖可降低预期采购成本2.5%。
This paper considers the social costs implied by inefficient allocation of contracts in a first-price, sealed-bid procurement auction with asymmetric bidders. We adopt a constrained (piecewise linear) strategy equilibrium concept and estimate the structural parameters of the bidders' distribution of costs. We estimate social costs defined as the predicted cost difference between the winning firm and the most efficient bidding firm. We also compare the expected procurement costs under two different auction formats. The data is collected from procurement auctions of road painting in Sweden during 1993–1999. The results indicate that the social costs of inefficient contract allocation is about 2% of total potential production cost and that an efficient second-price auction would lower the expected procurement cost by 2.5%.