Concorrenza e trasparenza nel mercato delle opere pubbliche locali: un'indagine empirica

Competition and transparency in public procurement: a survey - Italy suffers of a chronic lack of modern infrastructures. The market for public works is as a whole not transparent and inefficient in terms of costs and time of completion of the works; greater competition could improve the situation. The limitations to greater competition in the market for public works are manifold: i) asymmetric information, which has strong effects on the procedures for the firms? choice and on works contracts; ii) barriers to entry, due to the fragmented supply structure (many small firms) operating in segmented local markets. The analysis, based on direct surveys on local authorities and construction firms, highlights additional problems: i) the fragmentation of demand for local public works; very often the small local authorities do not have project expertise and the ability of implementing the necessary coordination with other local authorities; ii) an inefficient public monitoring on work progress; iii) a lack of reputational requirements, that take into account past behaviour, for the potential public works producers. JEL: D44, D74, D81, H54, H57 Keywords: public procurement, asymmetric information