Economic Efficiency and Political Capture in Public Service Contracts
研究了公共交通服务合同中，成本加成合同与固定价格合同的选择如何受效率监控和政治议程影响，发现成本加成合同虽社会成本更高，但能为特定群体保留租金，考虑利益集团转移后福利差距缩小。
We consider contracts for public transport services between a public authority and a transport operator. We build a structural endogenous switching model where the contract choice results from the combined effects of the incentivization scheme aimed at monitoring the operator's efficiency and the political agenda followed by the regulator to account for the voice of private interests. Our results support theoretical predictions as they suggest that cost‐plus contracts entail a higher cost for society than fixed‐price contracts but allow the public authority to leave a rent to a subset of individuals. Accounting for transfers to interest groups in welfare computations reduces the welfare gap between cost‐plus and fixed‐price regimes.