Winning by Default: Why is There So Little Competition in Government Procurement?
建立委托代理模型，分析政府采购中投标者稀少的原因，发现采购机构能从卖方抽取信息租金，且卖方同质性高，导致竞争不足。
Abstract Government procurement contracts rarely have many bids, often only one. Motivated by the institutional features of federal procurement, this article develops a principal-agent model where a buyer seeks sellers at a cost and negotiates contract terms with them. The model is identified and estimated with data on IT and telecommunications contracts. We find the benefits of drawing additional sellers are significantly reduced because the procurement agency can extract informational rents from sellers. Another factor explaining the small number of bids is that sellers are relatively homogeneous, conditional on observed project attributes. Administrative hurdles and corruption appear to play very limited roles.