We consider a Green Public Procurement setting where the procurer provides a bid discount to environment-friendly technologies to foster their use. We assume that, before the auction, firms may switch to green technology via a publicly observable costly investment. We show that investment acts as a signaling device. This mitigates the effect of incomplete information on firms’ costs, thereby triggering ...
This paper explores which climate-friendly projects could be part of the COVID-19 recovery while jump-starting the transition of the European basic materials industry. Findings from a literature review on technology options in advanced development stages for climate-friendly production and enhanced sorting and recycling of steel, cement, aluminium and plastics are combined with insights from interviews ...
Carbon pricing decisions by governments are prone to time-inconsistency, which causes the private sector to underinvest in emission-reducing technologies. We show that incentives for decarbonization can be improved if complementing carbon pricing with carbon contracts for differences, where the government commits to pay a fixed carbon price level to the investors. We derive conditions under which the ...
Motivated by the EU concept of Pre-Commercial Procurement and the massivepresence of SMEs in the European economy, we study how budget constraints affect R&D effort in sequential elimination tournaments. We show that introducingbudget constraints leads to a non-monotonicity in unconstrained contestants' effort.Furthermore, we show that if the budget asymmetry is not too large, unconstrainedcontestants ...
The transition towards low-carbon economies requires massive investments into renewable energies, which are commonly supported through regulatory frameworks. Yet, governments can have incentives - and the ability - to deviate from previously-announced support once those investments have been made, which can deter investments. We analyze a renewable energy regulation game, apply a model of time-inconsistency ...
In this paper we show that carbon pricing is subject to time-inconsistency and we investigate solutions to improve on the problem and restore the incentive for the private sector to invest in low-carbon innovation. We show that a superior price- investment equilibrium can be sustained in the long-term, if the policy-maker is enough forward looking and allowed to build reputation. In the short-term, ...
We exploit a new dataset based on EU procurement award notices to investigate the relationship between the degree of centralization of public procurement and its performance. We focus on the case of Italy, where all levels of government, along with a number of other public institutions, are involved in procurement and are subject to the same EU regulation. We find that i) municipalities and utilities, ...
This paper presents a novel theory of corruption in public procurement. It considers an agency setting of contract execution where the principal is a politician who can commit to a contract auditing policy. It is found that a benevolent politician, by choosing a sufficiently strict auditing, deters the contracting firm from padding costs, conversely, a selfish politician chooses a relatively lax auditing ...
十一年前，能否将可持续发展政策纳入一揽子经济刺激计划以应对 金融危机以及这些政策是否有助于促进经济复苏激起了人们激烈的 讨论。尽管决策者们倾向于在危机中依赖历经考验的传统政策，但 是否符合环境友好、低碳发展的长期目标已经被吸纳到多国在2009 年一揽子经济刺激计划的考量中。彼次危机的经验证明，以气候目 标为导向的经济刺激政策不仅能促进投资，短期内扶持经济生产与 就业，更能在环境资源的约束之下激发长期创新与发展的潜力。本 文将指出，通过一系列以气候目标为导向的经济政策，例如在可再 生能源领域和工业部门的低碳工艺过程方面推行差价合约，以及在 基础设施建设和建筑翻新中执行绿色采购标准，政府可以进一步确 保其一揽子经济刺激政策与实体经济低碳转型的长期目标保持一致 。历史经验给予我们信心，在应对当前因疫情引发的经济危机中，“ 绿色”的经济刺激政策将助力经济复苏与转型。 ...