This paper presents evidence on the perverse trade-off that first price auctions induce between low prices at the awarding stage and poor ex post performance when bids are not binding commitments. By exploiting the different timing with which first price auctions were introduced in Italy to...

This paper shows how in Medicare Part D insurers' gaming of the subsidy paid to low-income enrollees distorts premiums and raises the program cost. Using plan-level data from the first five years of the program, I find multiple instances of pricing strategy distortions for the largest insurers....

Objectives: Medicare Part D is the voluntary program that provides insurance for prescription drugs to 37 million US elderly. This form of public insurance is delivered exclusively through a choice-based private insurance market, where Medicare pays various types of subsidies. The objective of...

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...

We exploit a large dataset of contracts for public works awarded in Italy between 2000 and 2007 to document two empirical facts about time and cost renegotiations. First, although both types of renegotiations are systematic, their correlation is nearly zero. Second, several factors typically...

We study entry and bidding in procurement auctions where contracts are awarded to the bid closest to a trimmed average bid. These auctions, common in public procurement, create incentives to coordinate bids to manipulate the bid distribution. We present statistical tests to detect coordinated...

The public procurement of medical devices is increasingly relying on auction mechanisms to move toward more transparent procedures and to promote competition between suppliers in a market where the quality of the products matters enormously and an improper auction design could be very harmful....

The efficiency of publicly-subsidized, privately-provisioned social insurance programs depends on the interaction between strategic insurers and the subsidy mechanism. We study this interaction in the context of Medicare's prescription drug coverage program. We find that the observed mechanism...

Does a more competent public bureaucracy contribute to better economic outcomes? We address this question in the context of the US federal procurement of services and works by combining contract-level data on procurement performance and bureau-level data on competence and workforce...

Open enrollment periods are pervasively used in insurance markets to limit adverse selection risks resulting when enrollees can switch plans at will. We exploit a change in the open enrollment rules of Medicare Advatage to analyze how beneficiaries responded to the option of switching to a...