Division of Public Contracts into Lots and Bid Rigging: Can Economic Theory Provide an Answer?

Splitting large public contracts into lots fosters competition in the long and short run, and enhances the participation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in public procurement proceedings. However, the division of contracts into lots can also facilitate anticompetitive practices, such as bid rigging. In order to deal with this, economic theory has established two basic rules. The first one is that the number of lots should be smaller than the expected number of participants. The second one is that the contracting authorities should define at least one lot more than the number of incumbents and reserve it to new entrants. This paper discusses these rules and investigates to what extent they can indeed cope successfully with bid rigging. As it will be proved, they are not panacea for all cases of bid rigging and it is not always practically possible to apply them. Therefore, they need further elaboration and amendments. Suggestions will be made about how we could make them more effective. Some of these recommendations are based on ideas taken from the legal regime of USA

La comunicazione politica nei manifesti della campagna elettorale 2008

Il presente lavoro si propone di prendere in esame i criteri comunicativi adottati dai principali partiti nei manifesti elettorali prodotti in occasione delle elezioni politiche del 2008. Dopo una breve parte propedeutica sulla comunicazione politica ed un excursus sulla storia del manifesto politico si procede ad analizzare dettagliatamente i manifesti elettorali dei principali partiti: Il Popolo della Libertà, Alleanza Nazionale, Lega Nord, La Destra, Partito Democratico, Italia dei Valori, Unione di Centro, Partito Socialista, La Sinistra, l’Arcobaleno. L’analisi si basa sui manifesti che è stato possibile rintracciare sui siti internet dei partiti e nella Rete in generale. I principali campi di indagine sono: il tipo di immagini scelte dai partiti a suffragio delle loro proposte politiche, la grafica, i colori e il lessico adottato per attirare l’attenzione dell’elettore e convincerlo ad orientare il suo voto in una determinata direzion

The Case for Reforming the Rules on Contracting Authority Damages Claims for Bid Rigging in the EU

This paper investigates the reasons why contracting authorities are discouraged from lodging actions for damages against tenderers engaged in bid rigging and other collusive practices and whether the new EU Damages Directive has managed to overcome these problems and bring advantages over the longstanding damages claims based on tort law. It will be suggested that the steps that the new EU Damages Directive has taken are not adequate to boost the number of actions for damages initiated by public contracting authorities. The paper therefore makes a number of recommendations and explores whether there are alternative remedies to the standard tort law litigation, which would enable contracting authorities to access compensation more easily

Do e-auctions increase the risk of bid-rigging?

In my recent research on electronically conducted auctions (e-auctions), one of the most common procurement tools that public bodies use in order to acquire goods or services, I argue that some elements of the current procurement practice increase the risk of collusion and that the new EU Directive on public procurement has not managed to adequately deal with those issues

The cultural management of leadership

The purpose of this essay is to analyse leadership from a symbolic point of view, as a decisive action for the construction and management of the meanings and values on which all organizational practice is based. A cultural perspective is valuable in understanding how everything that happens within the organization as a whole tends to be permeated by its culture and, therefore, has to be considered in the framework of cultural data. Moreover, such perspective reveals how the culture of an organization cannot be pre-existent to its actors who are the ones who construct it in their interactions over time. In this sense, the themes of leadership and culture are so closely related that they represent the two faces of a coin. Leadership, therefore, should be regarded as a symbolic action. If it is true that every firm has its own culture intended as the power of a group, then it is the leader who actually constructs and manages it in a sort of "cultural management", involving the skills of reading, interpreting and making the organizational culture operative. Furthermore, the question of the double nature of leadership is still open in the theoretical debate, where it is considered as innate talents on the one hand, and as an acquired skill on the other

Major axis approach to the statistical analysis of the relative growth of Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) in the Odra estuary (Poland)

Abstract A total of 379 individuals of Eriocheir sinensis (198 males and 181 females) were captured in the Odra estuary (Poland). The crabs were thawed and their carapace length (CL), the maximum carapace width (CW) and the maximum height (CH) were measured. Measurements were also taken on each claw, the claw length (CHL1, the right claw; CHL2, the left claw), the width (CHW1 and CHW2 for the right and the left claw, respectively), and the height (CHH1 and CHH2 for the right and the left claw). For each crab, the wet weight was measured for each of the following body components: the whole crab (CrWe), the carapace (CaWe), the right claw (WRC) and the left claw (WLC). For females, the relationship between CL and CW, CH and CW were isometric, and for all linear measures, the relationship with CW was positively allometric. For males only this first relationship was isometric, but others were positively allometric. The differences between relative growth parameters for males and females were statistically significant

The relative growth of walking legs of adult Chinese mitten crabs, Eriocheir sinensis in the Odra estuary (Poland). The major axis statistical modeling

Abstract We have quantified the relative growth of the merus and the propodus & carpus of walking legs of an adult of Eriocheir sinensis against the carapace width by fitting the major axis lines. Different lines have been fitted to data relative to male and female individuals. Slope and elevation tests have been performed to investigate sexual dimorphism. Isometry tests have been used to classify the relative growth of each part of the legs against the carapace width as isometric or allometric. All the slope tests have not rejected the null hypothesis of a common slope for the major axes fitted to male data and to female data. However, all the elevation tests have rejected the null hypothesis of a common elevation; so sexual dimorphism was detected for all measured leg parts. The isometry tests have rejected the null hypothesis of isometry only for the merus of the first (left and right) legs of male individuals. All the other isometry tests have not rejected the null hypothesis of isometry. So the relative growth of all the measured leg parts, but the merus of the first (left and right) legs of males, against the carapace width was isometric both for males and for females