Set-aside auctions and small businesses’ participation in public procurement: an empirical analysis

Gegam Shagbazian, Paola Valbonesi, Andrey Tkachenko and Elena Shadrina

Applied Economics, 2026, vol. 58, issue 5, 889-903

Abstract: We investigate the effects of set-aside (SA) auctions supporting small business participation in public procurement, exploiting an original database of e-auctions for Russian granulated sugar (a largely homogeneous good) in the period 2011–2013. This affirmative action programme – as in many others similar and commonly adopted programmes by governments – records confounding effects. On the one hand, SA auctions attract more small business enterprises; on the other hand, SA auctions restrict the entry of possibly more cost-efficient large firms. Our findings highlight that SA auctions, on average, determine lower final prices for the procurer than non-SA (NSA) auctions do, although competition in SA auctions is not higher. We show that these findings depend on the reserve price intervals, supporting the effectiveness of SA auctions for small-scale procurement.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2025.2460745 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:applec:v:58:y:2026:i:5:p:889-903

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2025.2460745

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().