Buyers' Ability and Discretion in Procurement: An Empirical Analysis on Standardised Medical Devices

Alessandro Bucciol, Riccardo Camboni () and Paola Valbonesi
Additional contact information
Riccardo Camboni: University of Padova

No 16/2017, Working Papers from University of Verona, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using a dataset of medical devices purchased by Italian Public Buyers (PBs), for each purchase, we measure the difference between each item's price and its marginal cost. We define PBs' ability in purchasing as PBs' fixed effect (FE) on that difference. We find that average prices vary substantially amongst PBs, and this variation is largely captured by PBs' FE. We then exploit the exogenous termination of the mandatory reference price regime to assess how discretion affects procurement performance, given each PB's ability. Our results highlight that reduced PBs' discretion - in presence of mandatory prices - determines efficiency gains and losses for low- and high-ability PBs, respectively.

Keywords: Public Procurement; Medical Devices; Buyer's Ability; Reference Price; Regulatory Discretion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 D73 H57 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dse.univr.it/home/workingpapers/wp2017n16.pdf Revised version (application/pdf)

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:ver:wpaper:16/2017

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Verona, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael Reiter ().