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Tenure in Office and Public Procurement
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Tenure in Office and Public Procurement

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Abstract

We investigate how the functioning of public procurement is affected by the time politicians have stayed in office. We match a data set on public procurement auctions by Italian municipalities to a data set on the politics of municipal governments. For each municipality, we relate the mayor’s tenure in office to several outcomes of the procurement process. The main result is that an increase in a mayor’s tenure (the number of terms in office) is associated with “worse” outcomes: fewer bidders per auction, a higher cost of procurement, and a higher probability that the winner is local and that the same firm is awarded repeated auctions. We make use of a quasi-experimental change in the electoral law (the introduction of a two-term limit) to argue that the correlation is in fact causal. Finally, we provide a simple theoretical model of repeated auctions in which these findings are consistent with time in office progressively leading to collusion between government officials and a few favored bidders.

Suggested Citation

  • Decio Coviello & Stefano Gagliarducci, 2010. "Tenure in Office and Public Procurement," CEIS Research Paper 179, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 21 Dec 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:179
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ingraham Allan T, 2005. "A Test for Collusion between a Bidder and an Auctioneer in Sealed-Bid Auctions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-32, September.
    2. Paulo K. Monteiro & Flavio M. Menezes, 2000. "original papers : Auctions with endogenous participation," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 5(1), pages 71-89.
    3. Luis Garicano & Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Canice Prendergast, 2005. "Favoritism Under Social Pressure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 208-216, May.
    4. Ernesto Dal Bó & Martín Rossi, 2008. "Term Length and Political Performance," NBER Working Papers 14511, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Mailath, George J. & Samuelson, Larry, 2006. "Repeated Games and Reputations: Long-Run Relationships," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195300796.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tenure in office; Procurement auctions; Public works; Term limit;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General

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