Negotiated Procedures Overrated ? Evidence from France Questions the Commission’s Approach in the Latest Procurement Reforms

19 décembre 2012

Abstract :

The new European legislative proposals on public procurement suggest introducing the unconditional possibility for public buyers to use negotiated procedures with publication. Such procedures have been available to French public buyers for contracts up to €5 million since 2004. We use an original and comprehensive database from Paris Habitat-OPH, the largest social housing constructor in Europe, to empirically assess the impact of negotiated procedures on price. After satisfyingly dealing with the endogeneity issue associated with the use of negotiated procedures, we find that such procedures significantly decreased the received bids by close to 26 % (the coefficient drops to 15.7% when excluding « abnormally » high offers). Some drivers of the positive effects we observe are highlighted, enabling us to derive practical implications of these results for public policies.

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Retendering a contract for breach of procurement rules or changes to contract

30 octobre 2012

The Applied Law and Economics of Public Procurement

Edited by Gustavo Piga, Steen Treumer

Published 6th September 2012 by Routledge – 308 pages

This book explores Public Procurement novelties and challenges in an interdisciplinary way. The process whereby the public sector awards contracts to companies for the supply of works, goods or services is a powerful instrument to ensure the achievement of new public goals as well as an efficient use of public funds. This book brings together the papers that have been presented during the « First Symposium on Public Procurement », a conference held in Rome last summer and to be repeated again yearly.

As Public Procurement touches on many fields (law, economics, political science, engineering) the editors have used an interdisciplinary approach to discuss four main topics of interest which represent the four different parts in which this book is divided:

  • Competitive dialogue and contractual design fostering innovation and need analysis,
  • Separation of selection and award criteria, including exclusion of reputation indicators like references to experience, performance and CV’s from award criteria,
  • Retendering a contract for breach of procurement rules or changes to contract (contract execution),
  • Set-asides for small and medium firms, as in the USA system with the Small Business Act that reserves shares of tenders to SMEs only.

    More information here

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