Junior Research Group Public Procurement

Focus of the Junior Research Group

  • Innovation, Green and Healthcare Contracts
  • Bureaucratic Incentives
  • Business Responses to Government Demand
  • Pricing and Competition Regulation

Public procurement (PP) is the purchase of supplies, services, and works from public authorities as inputs for their daily activity, the creation of public assets, and social transfers in kind to citizens. This category of public spending has been a topic of great interest in recent years and has attracted the attention of both scholars and policymakers. This is because PP is:

  1. economically and socially relevant as it accounts for a significant portion of the public demand in the economy and involves critical challenges that affect citizens’ daily life; 
  2. a playing field for examining key economic phenomena (e.g. corruption, collusion, asymmetric information) and evaluating government performance. 

Study methods and main research questions

Since its launch in October 2019, the activities of the junior research group have been mainly devoted to empirical research. The group has used data from the United States and European countries to answer questions such as whether bureaucratic competence affects procurement outcomes, the impact of group purchasing on prices paid by the public sector and on other non-price dimensions, and the impact of the public demand on firm-level outcomes such as survival.

Contact

Leonardo Maria Giuffrida

Ph.D Leonardo Maria Giuffrida, PhD

Head of Junior Research Group Email leonardo.giuffrida@zew.de Phone +49 (0)621 1235-328
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