IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/annpce/v78y2007i2p161-194.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

High And Low Bids In Tenders: Strategic Pricing And Other Bidding Behaviour In Public Tenders Of Passenger Railway Services

Author

Listed:
  • Gunnar ALEXANDERSSON
  • Staffan HULTÉN

Abstract

ABSTRACT**: An important component in the deregulation of the public sector in the European Union is public procurement of services and products. This article studies the bidding behaviour of firms participating in public tenders of passenger railway services in Sweden. In a theoretical part of the article we discuss the various possible reasons behind high and low bids in tenders, linked to a discussion on pricing strategies and continuous and discontinuous economies of scale regarding costs of production. Detailed data on bids and bidders in Swedish tenders of railway services are then analyzed. 37 tenders taking place between 1989 and 2005 are included.

Suggested Citation

  • Gunnar ALEXANDERSSON & Staffan HULTÉN, 2007. "High And Low Bids In Tenders: Strategic Pricing And Other Bidding Behaviour In Public Tenders Of Passenger Railway Services," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 78(2), pages 161-194, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:annpce:v:78:y:2007:i:2:p:161-194
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8292.2007.00331.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8292.2007.00331.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-8292.2007.00331.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Catherine D. Wolfram, 1998. "Strategic Bidding in a Multiunit Auction: An Empirical Analysis of Bids to Supply Electricity in England and Wales," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(4), pages 703-725, Winter.
    2. Andrew Eckert, 2002. "Predatory Pricing and the Speed of Antitrust Enforcement," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 20(4), pages 375-383, June.
    3. Kenneth Hendricks & Joris Pinkse & Robert H. Porter, 2003. "Empirical Implications of Equilibrium Bidding in First-Price, Symmetric, Common Value Auctions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(1), pages 115-145.
    4. Patrick Bajari & Lixin Ye, 2003. "Deciding Between Competition and Collusion," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 971-989, November.
    5. Porter, Robert H & Zona, J Douglas, 1993. "Detection of Bid Rigging in Procurement Auctions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 518-538, June.
    6. Sorana, Valter, 2000. "Auctions for Universal Service Subsidies," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 33-58, July.
    7. Ali Hortacsu & Steven L. Puller, 2005. "Understanding Strategic Bidding in Restructured Electricity Markets: A Case Study of ERCOT," NBER Working Papers 11123, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. repec:bla:jindec:v:48:y:2000:i:2:p:161-75 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. J. Luis Guasch & Stéphane Straub, 2006. "Renegotiation Of Infrastructure Concessions: An Overview," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 77(4), pages 479-493, December.
    10. Kagel, John H. & Levin, Dan, 1986. "The Winner's Curse and Public Information in Common Value Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 894-920, December.
    11. Uwe Latacz-Lohmann & Carel Van der Hamsvoort, 1997. "Auctioning Conservation Contracts: A Theoretical Analysis and an Application," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 79(2), pages 407-418.
    12. Han Hong & Matthew Shum, 2002. "Increasing Competition and the Winner's Curse: Evidence from Procurement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 871-898.
    13. Lynne M. Pepall & Daniel J. Richards, 2001. "Reach for the Stars: A Strategic Bidding Game," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 68(272), pages 489-504, November.
    14. Owen R. Phillips & Dale J. Menkhaus & Kalyn T. Coatney, 2003. "Collusive Practices in Repeated English Auctions: Experimental Evidence on Bidding Rings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 965-979, June.
    15. Abrantes-Metz, Rosa M. & Froeb, Luke M. & Geweke, John & Taylor, Christopher T., 2006. "A variance screen for collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 467-486, May.
    16. Frédéric Boehm & Juanita Olaya, 2006. "Corruption In Public Contracting Auctions: The Role Of Transparency In Bidding Processes," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 77(4), pages 431-452, December.
    17. Roberts, John, 1986. "A Signaling Model of Predatory Pricing," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 38(0), pages 75-93, Suppl. No.
    18. J. Luis Guasch, 2004. "Granting and Renegotiating Infrastructure Concessions : Doing it Right," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15024.
    19. Oliver E. Williamson, 1976. "Franchise Bidding for Natural Monopolies -- in General and with Respect to CATV," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(1), pages 73-104, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Veeneman, Wijnand, 2016. "Public transport governance in the Netherlands: More recent developments," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 116-122.
    2. van der Hoek, M. Peter, 2008. "Local public procurement: how to deal with a creative bidder? A case study from the Netherlands," MPRA Paper 24280, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 27 Oct 2009.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Athias, Laure & Nunez, Antonio, 2008. "The more the merrier? Number of bidders, information dispersion, renegotiation and winner’s curse in toll road concessions," MPRA Paper 10539, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. De Silva, Dakshina G. & Dunne, Timothy & Kankanamge, Anuruddha & Kosmopoulou, Georgia, 2008. "The impact of public information on bidding in highway procurement auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 150-181, January.
    3. Paul Klemperer, 2007. "Bidding Markets," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 1-47.
    4. Patrick Bajari & Stephanie Houghton & Steven Tadelis, 2004. "Bidding for Incompete Contracts," Working Papers 2004.141, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    5. Loyola, Gino, 2008. "On bidding markets: the role of competition," UC3M Working papers. Economics we083318, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    6. Patrick Bajari & Stephanie Houghton & Steve Tadelis, 2006. "Bidding for Incomplete Contracts: An Empirical Analysis," NBER Working Papers 12051, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Francesco Decarolis, 2009. "When the Highest Bidder Loses the Auction: Theory and Evidence from Public Procurement," 2009 Meeting Papers 130, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Susan Athey & Philip A. Haile, 2006. "Empirical Models of Auctions," NBER Working Papers 12126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Eshien Chong & Carine Staropoli & Anne Yvrande-Billon, 2014. "Auction versus Negotiation in Public Procurement: Looking for Empirical Evidence," Post-Print hal-00512813, HAL.
    10. Clark, Robert & Coviello, Decio & de Leverano, Adriano, 2020. "Complementary bidding and the collusive arrangement: Evidence from an antitrust investigation," ZEW Discussion Papers 20-052, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    11. Hannes Wallimann & Silvio Sticher, 2023. "On suspicious tracks: machine-learning based approaches to detect cartels in railway-infrastructure procurement," Papers 2304.11888, arXiv.org.
    12. John K. Horowitz & Lori Lynch & Andrew Stocking, 2009. "Competition-Based Environmental Policy: An Analysis of Farmland Preservation in Maryland," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 85(4), pages 555-575.
    13. Martin Huber & David Imhof & Rieko Ishii, 2022. "Transnational machine learning with screens for flagging bid‐rigging cartels," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(3), pages 1074-1114, July.
    14. Elena Krasnokutskaya, 2012. "Identification And Estimation Of Auction Model With Two‐Dimensional Unobserved Heterogeneity," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(3), pages 659-692, August.
    15. Estache, Antonio & Iimi, Atsushi, 2008. "Procurement efficiency for infrastructure development and financial needs reassessed," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4662, The World Bank.
    16. Huber, Martin & Imhof, David, 2019. "Machine learning with screens for detecting bid-rigging cartels," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 277-301.
    17. Gunnar Alexandersson & Staffan Hultén, 2006. "Predatory bidding in competitive tenders: A Swedish case study," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 73-94, July.
    18. Sergio Galletta & Mario Jametti & Agustin Redonda, 2015. "Highway to Economic Growth? Competition in Public Works Tenders in the Democratic Republic of Congo," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 83(2), pages 240-252, June.
    19. Granlund, David & Rudholm, Niklas, 2023. "Calculating the probability of collusion based on observed price patterns," Umeå Economic Studies 1014, Umeå University, Department of Economics, revised 13 Oct 2023.
    20. Ilke Onur & Bedri Kamil Onur Tas, 2019. "Optimal bidder participation in public procurement auctions," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(3), pages 595-617, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:annpce:v:78:y:2007:i:2:p:161-194. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1370-4788 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.