Public Economics Commons^™

Single Bidders And Tacit Collusion In Highway Procurement Auctions, David R. Barrus, Frank A. Scott Jr.

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

Collusion in auctions can take different forms, one of which is refraining from bidding. Such behavior may be overt or tacit.Certain aspects of highway procurement auctions facilitate collusive outcomes. We collect data on asphalt paving auctions conducted by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet from 2005 to 2007. We analyze both the bid participation decision and the pricing decision. We include variables that affect firm’s’ costs as well as variables that capture competitive and strategic effects. Most importantly, we determine the potential service area of each asphalt plant and use that information to determine the potential bidders for each paving project. We …

Information, Competition, And The Quality Of Charities, Silvana Krasteva, Huseyin Yildirim

Huseyin Yildirim

Drawing upon the all-pay auction literature, we propose a model of charity competition in which informed giving alone can account for the significant quality heterogeneity across similar charities. Our analysis identifies a negative effect of competition and a positive effect of informed giving on the equilibrium quality of charity. In particular, we show that as the number of charities grows, so does the percentage of charity scams, approaching one in the limit. In light of this and other results, we discuss the need for regulating nonprofit entry and conduct as well as promoting informed giving.

Responses To Change In The Global Political Economy Of Innovation – The Role Of Sub-National States In Industrial Transition, Dan Herman

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation seeks to explore how sub-national levels of the state promote the development of new industrial sectors. To do so this dissertation builds on a series of theoretical perspectives on the role of the state in the economy and develops a unique view of how sub-national states coalesce and contrast within these perspectives. It does so through a series of empirical case studies focused on sub-national jurisdictions in North America that highlight diverse varieties of state actions that contribute, if not lead, industrial transitions and the development of new innovation-oriented industrial sectors. In so doing, the dissertation presents a …

Cguppi: Scoring Incentives To Engage In Parallel Accommodating Conduct, Serge Moresi, David Reitman, Steven C. Salop, Yianis Sarafidis

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We propose an index for scoring coordination incentives, which we call the “coordination GUPPI” or cGUPPI. While the cGUPPI can be applied to a wide range of coordinated effects concerns, it is particularly relevant for gauging concerns of parallel accommodating conduct (PAC), a concept that received due prominence in the 2010 U.S. Horizontal Merger Guidelines. PAC is a type of coordinated conduct whereby a firm raises price with the expectation—but without any prior agreement—that one or more other firms will follow and match the price increase. The cGUPPI is the highest uniform price increase that all the would-be coordinating firms …

Competition’S Effect On Teacher Pay And Teacher Characteristics, Casey S. Brasher

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation adds to the literature that examines the effect of competition and school choice reform in elementary and secondary education. Specifically, we explore how three major forms of competition in U.S. schooling markets in Tiebout competition, charter competition, and private school competition affect the teaching profession by estimating a teacher wage equation and series of teacher characteristic equations. Since it has been well-established that all 3 forms of competition are likely endogenous, we present 2SLS estimates of competition’s effect in addition to simple OLS estimates. Our findings confirm the importance of studies controlling for endogeneity concerns, particularly in regards …

Federal Competition And Economic Growth, Katrina Kosec, John William Hatfield

Katrina Kosec

Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The behavior of academic institutions, including the extent to which they collaborate on academic and nonacademic matters, is shaped by many factors. This paper focuses on one of these factors, the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) annual ranking of the nation’s colleges and universities as undergraduate institutions, exploring how this ranking exacerbates the competitiveness among American higher education institutions. After presenting some evidence on the importance of the USNWR rankings to both public and private institutions at all levels along the selectivity spectrum, I describe how the rankings actually are calculated, then discuss how academic institutions alter their …