Procurement Mechanisms for Assortments of Differentiated Products
研究政府等采购机构如何通过限制相近替代品进入产品组合来增强价格竞争、降低支出，同时保持消费者选择多样性，并已用于智利政府的框架协议改革。
Many procurement agencies around the world construct assortments of differentiated products from which consumers can buy from. A leading example is framework agreements, a type of procurement mechanism commonly used by governments. This type of practice is studied head on. The authors introduce a mechanism design formulation of the procurement agency’s problem and solves it under progressively more realistic implementation constraints. The results show how restricting entry of close-substitute products into the assortment can increase price competition, reducing spending significantly, without much damage to the variety offered to consumers. Furthermore, the results have practical implications that can be used by procurement agencies to increase consumer surplus and have already been used to redesign FAs in the Chilean government.