How "one-size-fits-all" public works contract does it better? An assessment of infrastructure provision in Italy

Massimo Finocchiaro Castro, Calogero Guccio () and Ilde Rizzo

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: Public infrastructure procurement is crucial as a prerequisite for public and private investments and for economic and social capital growth. However, low performance in execution severely hinders infrastructure provision and benefits delivery. One of the most sensitive phases in public infrastructure procurement is the design because of the strategic relationship that it potentially creates between procurers and contractors in the execution stage, affecting the costs and the duration of the contract. In this paper, using recent developments in non-parametric frontiers and propensity score matching, we evaluate the performance in the execution of public works in Italy. The analysis provides robust evidence of significant improvement of performance where procurers opt for design and build contracts, which lead to lower transaction costs, allowing contractors to better accommodate the project in the execution. Our findings bear considerable policy implications.

Keywords: Infrastructure provision; Transaction costs economics; propensity score matching; non-parametric frontiers; public works procurement; performance; design and build contracts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 D73 H57 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-eff, nep-reg and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/270729/1/M ... 20al%20WPversion.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: How 'one-size-fits-all' public works contract does it better? An assessment of infrastructure provision in Italy (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:270729

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().