Putting All One's Eggs in One Basket: Relational Contracts and the Provision of Local Public Services

The provision of local public services is increasingly being contracted out to private companies. We observe that local governments regularly choose the same private operator for a range of different services, and develop a model of relational contracts that shows how this strategy may lead to better performance at lower cost for public authorities. We test the implication of our model using an original database of the contractual choices made by 5000 French local public authorities in the years 1998, 2001 and 2004.bundling; contract; public-private partnerships; local public services

Auction versus Negotiation in Public Procurement: Looking for Empirical Evidence

The relative efficiency of auctions and negotiations is still a puzzle in the literature. While auctions are the prescribed procedures and the most used ones for public procurement, in the private sector, where buyers are free to choose their purchasing method, competitive tendering is far from being their preferred option (Bajari et al. 2009). In addition, recent empirical studies (Estache et al. 2009, Bajari et al. 2009) highlight some failures of auction procedures and identify conditions under which negotiation is more efficient. In particular, they show that auctions perform poorly when projects are complex. In this paper, our aim is to contribute to this debate by providing an empirical analysis of how awarding mechanisms are chosen in public procurement in France. To this end, we examine a comprehensive database of 76,188 observations corresponding to the entire set of public procurement work contracts awarded between 2005 and 2007 in the construction sector. We find empirical regularities regarding the choice of awarding procedures by public buyers. However, most of these regularities do not coincide with what the theoretical literature considers as transaction-cost minimizing behaviours. In particular, the size of the construction projects as well as the length of contracts do not appear as key determinants of the choice of awarding procedures, which translates into costly renegotiations.Auctions; Public Procurement, Contract Theories

Yardstick Competition, Franchise Bidding and Firms’ Incentives to Collude

Collusion, Franchise bidding, Local public services, Yardstick competition, D42, D44, L50, L51,

Enchères, concurrence par comparaisons et collusion

National audienceLa concurrence par comparaison permet de créer une pseudo-compétition entre firmes dans des secteurs localement monopolistiques. Cependant, ces dernières peuvent avoir une incitation à la collusion, rendant du même coup cette réglemen-tation inefficace. Nous abordons cette question dans le cadre d'un jeu répété avec deux firmes symétriques. Nous montrons notamment qu'une mise aux enchères des marchés préalable à l'instauration d'une politique de concurrence par comparaison peut contribuer à rendre la collusion instable, à condition que les droits de monopoles soient attribués pendant une période suffisamment longue. Ce résultat plaide pour une utilisation conjointe de ces deux outils comme moyens de lutte contre les pratiques collusives

Public-private partnerships and prices : evidence from water distribution in France

International audienceWe use an original database of 5000 French local public authorities to explore the impact of organizational choice and performance as measured by consumer prices. In quantifying the impact of the choice of public-private partnerships (PPPs) on performance, we consider the related issue of the determinants of organizational choice. We estimate a switching regressions model to account for the endogeneity of organizational choice, and find that in our sample, (i) the choice by local public authorities to engage in a PPP is not random, and (ii) conditional on the choice of a PPP, consumer prices are significantly higher on average

Partenariats Public-Privé et Investissements de Fin de Contrat : le Cas de l'Industrie de l'Eau en France

International audienc

Electricity storage : how to facilitate its deployment and operation in the EU

Each semester the THINK project publishes two research reports based on topics proposed by the European CommissionQM-31-12-493-EN-C (print) QM-31-12-493-EN-N (online)Topic 8. Final Report June 2012The THINK project (2010-2013) is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, Strategic Energy Technology Plan. (Call FP7-ENERGY-2009-2, Grant Agreement no: 249736). Coordinator: Prof. Jean-Michel Glachant and Dr. Leonardo Meeus, Florence School of Regulation, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institut

Enchères, concurrence par comparaison et collusion

Yardstick competition is an incentive regulatory tool which allows the regulator to introduce virtual competition into monopolistic industries. But as with any competitive environnement, regulated firms may have incentives to collude, thereby undermining the efficiency of the regulation. We study this issue using an infinitely repeated game framework with two symmetric firms. We show that, under the condition that monopoly rights are granted for a sufficiently long period of time, the use of auctions to attribute the markets before regulating them by yardstick competition may make collusion relatively harder to sustain. This result pleads for the use of auctions together with yardstick competition to struggle against collusive behaviours. Classification JEL: D42, D44, L50, L51

La rénovation énergétique des bâtiments : Les collectivités territoriales au milieu du gué

National audienc

VIII. La rénovation énergétique des bâtiments : les collectivités territoriales au milieu du gué

Chong Eshien, Le Lannier Aude, Staropoli Carine. VIII. La rénovation énergétique des bâtiments : les collectivités territoriales au milieu du gué. In: Droit et gestion des collectivités territoriales. Tome 33, 2013. Collectivités territoriales et énergie : ambitions et contradictions. pp. 155-168