Regional and local authorities award 54% of the public works contracts submitted to the Authority for the Supervision of Public Contracts. This paper analyses the regulations adopted in the period 2000–2010 in all Italian regions and a sample of provinces and municipalities and shows how...

The doctrine of "Pacta Sunt Servanda" revolves around the necessity of ensuring that reliable promises are made; and that any defaults by either party are properly evaluated and addressed during adjudication of contractual disputes. As an international best practice, this doctrine is always applied...

There are widespread perceptions and countless documented cases of tight-knit networks of politicians and businessmen colluding for allocating public procurement contracts in return for political party donations. In the absence of systematic evidence, neither the magnitude of the problem nor the...

An imperfectly-informed regulator needs to procure multiple units of some good (e.g., green energy, market liquidity, pollution reduction, land conservation) that can be produced with heterogeneous technologies at various costs. How should she optimally procure these units? Should she run...

Despite the importance of the public procurement market, little effort has been made to systematically and consistently collect reliable statistics on a number of critical dimensions. To date, no attempt has been made to collect comparable statistics on the size of public procurement in...

Appropriate and effective regulatory frameworks remain crucial for ensuring that investments in infrastructure are done strategically and efficiently. Benchmarking infrastructure development 2020 assesses the regulatory quality for preparation, procurement, and management of large infrastructure...