Buyers' workload and R&D procurement outcomes: Evidence from the US Air Force Research Lab

Leonardo M. Giuffrida and Emilio Raiteri

No 21-059, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Does workload constitute a bottleneck to a public agency's mission, and if so, to what extent? We ask these questions in the context of the US government's procurement of R&D. We link tender, contract, patent, and office records to the identity of the officer responsible for the procurement process to estimate how workload in the federal acquisition unit affects the execution of R&D contracts. The identification comes from unanticipated retirement shifts among contracting officers, which we use to instrument workload. We find a large increase in patenting at the extensive margin when the same officer is exposed to a declining workload. In our sample, an additional contracting officer in the procurement unit, holding fixed the procurement budget and number of purchases, leads to a two percentage point increase in the probability for an R&D contract to generate patents. We provide suggestive evidence that backlogged contracting officers are unable to devote enough time to tender and contract specifications.

Keywords: Workload; Public Procurement; Contracting Officer; R&D; Patents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 H57 O31 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-ino, nep-isf and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/236635/1/1765457327.pdf (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:zbw:zewdip:21059

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().