This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of labour among parents of school-aged children in two-parent opposite-gender families. In line with existing evidence, we find that mothers' paid work took a larger hit than that of fathers, and...

This study investigates how West German spouses have responded by adjusting their time allocation to the alimony reform introduced in 2008. This reform imposed financial self-responsibility after a finalized divorce. It weakened the relative bargaining position of the spouse with a claim for...

This paper aims to pursue a deeper understanding of gendered within-couple allocation of time into paid work and housework in heterosexual dual-earner couples. Relying on the second wave of Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS) data for 10 European countries, we estimate spousal relative...

Participation of small businesses in the market for public contracts is widely recognized as a key policy issue. It is also commonly held that the adoption of e-procurement solutions can be effective in pursuing such an objective. To this end, we analyze the transactions completed in the period...

Competitive bidding (as auctions) is commonly used to procure goods and services. Public buyers are often mandated by law to adopt competitive procedures to ensure transparency and promote full competition. Recent theoretical literature, however, suggests that open competition can perform poorly...

We provide a general framework in which to determine the optimal penalty fee inducing the contractor to respect the contracted delivery date in public procurement contracts (PPCs). We do this by developing a real option model that enables us to investigate the contractor's value of investment...

India's economic standing and its policy landscape have come a long way since the 1943 Bengal famine. History saw buffer stocking of food grains as a famine-combating tool. Today, apart from serving as an effective hedge in times of famines, such grain stocks are a conduit deployed by the...

This paper considers the supplier's strategic delivery lead time in a public procurement setting as the result of the firm's opportunistic behaviour on the optimal investment timing. In the presence of uncertainty on construction costs, we model the supplier's option to defer the contract's...

We show that privatization can be beneficial even if the government is rational and benevolent, and if the firm's economic and informational environment is independent of the governance structure. The model assumes that wage contracts between the firm's owner (government or private entrepreneur)...

When procurement contracts are incomplete, they are frequently changed after the contract is awarded to the lowest bidder. This results in a final cost that differs from the initial price, and may involve significant transaction costs due to renegotiation. We propose a stylized model of bidding...