Auction Formats and Award Rules in Swedish Procurement Auctions

This paper provides an empirical analysis of outcomes from Swedish procurement auctions given award criterion and auction format. The auctions are single unit first-price sealed bid auctions or its simultaneous counterpart, and contracts can be awarded to lowest bidder or in accordance with qualitative criteria. The empirical results provide no evidence of differences in winning bids depending on the auction format. The award rule on the other hand matters, a horizontal comparison show higher winning bids on contracts awarded to some other but the lowest bidder. The effect of bidder interaction and bidder identity is also considered.Published in Rivista di Politica Economica, ISSN 0035-6468 2006 Vol 96 no 1-2 pp 91-116. Changesmay have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication