Public Procurement in Law and Practice
研究了187个国家的公共采购法律、实践和结果数据，发现法律与实践高度相关，但法律本身与结果无关；严格的法律仅在公共部门能力低的国家改善结果。
We examine a new dataset of public procurement laws, practice, and outcomes in 187 countries. We measure regulation as restrictions on the discretion of the procuring entities. We find that laws and practice are highly correlated with each other across countries, and better practice is correlated with better outcomes, but laws themselves are not correlated with outcomes. A closer look shows that stricter laws correlate with improved outcomes, but only in countries with low public sector capacity. We present a model of procurement in which both regulatory rules and public sector capacity determine procurement outcomes. In the model, regulation is effective in countries with low public sector capacity, but not in countries with high capacity because it inhibits the socially optimal exercise of discretion to exclude low quality bidders.