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Previous empirical studies examine the effect of asymmetries across bidders on auction outcomes. This paper tests for asymmetries in behavior when bidders are confronted with different regulatory environments. Data from federal and state highway resurfacing projects in Colorado are used to determine if bids are more aggressive when contractors switch from federal projects, with Davis-Bacon prevailing wage and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise regulations, to less-regulated state projects. Results from fixed effects estimates of winning bids indicate that the level of aggressive bidding is not altered with a change in regulations, at least not with respect to the policies and types of projects examined here.

The main aim of this paper is to review some of the newest and most promising advances in auction theory with an eye to applications to procurement practice. Here we focus in particular on four topics related to multidimensional auctions: 1) how to define a proper scoring rule when the awarding bodies lack the necessary information regarding its own preferences and suppliers’ technology; 2) how to cope with the information disclosure policy regarding the discretional evaluation of some aspects of each contractual proposal; 3) how to use contractors’ reputations based on their past performance in the awarding process; 4) how to control the risk of collusion and corruption in the awarding phase.

The Tata owned Coastal Gujarat Power Limited is seeking to reopen Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with state owned distribution utilities because of increase in imported coal prices resulting from a change in Indonesian laws. The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has decided to provide relief through a “compensatory tariff”. This is opposed by the power purchasers. Simultaneously, another Reliance Energy owned power project is seeking relief from unprecedented change in exchange rates using the CGPL decision as a precedent. The CERC and the power purchasers have to decide what to do next.

GMR Infrastructure Limited (GMRIL) had to make a decision on its continued role in the 555.48 km Kishangarh Udaipur Ahmedabad (KUA) Expressway Project, India's then longest road public-private partnership (PPP) project. GMR had terminated the contract citing NHAI's failure in fulfilling Conditions Precedent (CP) of providing (i) environment clearance (EC), (ii) revised toll free notification and (iii) 80% of required land. The case intends to educate the reader on the concessionaire-authority dynamics in typical Indian infrastructure PPPs. Taking into account its internal strategy, the extant unfavourable investment climate, the Central Government's steps to revive private interest in the highways sector and NHAI's quick turnaround in fulfilling CP, GMR had to decide how to respond.

Making an M&A deal “work” is one of the hardest tasks in business. A handful of best practices can reduce the risk and give the deal a fighting chance. The inherent danger in due diligence is not that companies fail to do it, but that they fail to do it well. The deals that are being struck today are far riskier than those of the 1990s. Four “best practices” separate the winners from the losers in the M&A playoffs. Call on the experts (internal and external) who have experience in helping companies identify and realize cost and revenue synergies. Trust but verify. Focus on what matters – such as: create an aggressive market penetration strategy; devise an innovative plan for product launches; realign the sales force; rationalize the supply chain network and IT applications and create a shared services organization. Identify the high priority, complex initiatives, determine the associated risks and craft risk mitigation plans. Orchestrate the unveiling – smart acquirers know that analysts react more favorably to an announcement of an acquisition if it is followed up with a cogent discussion about the acquirer’s high priority integration initiatives, key risk factors and risk mitigation plans (including timing of each).

Real estate developers often operate in oligopolistic environments. Pricing strategies must be made in an interactive framework that makes empirical evaluation difficult. This study appeals to economic experiments to examine how developers price their properties, especially when there is an option to market pre‐completed units. In addition, the interaction between bidding for land and pricing the end product is examined. The results indicate that competitor actions are important considerations in pricing decisions. In particular, the profit maximizing pricing strategy depends critically on being competitive, not necessarily being the most aggressive. Interestingly, pre‐completed units sell only at prices that incorporate future price expectations, and successful bids tend to precipitate more aggressive pricing. Finally, competitive bidding and pricing strategies appear to the best profit maximizing strategy.

This paper aims to study aggressive bidding strategies in real estate auctions – a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach.

The authors use two data sets to study aggressive bidding strategies. First, the results from a survey with 1,803 participants examining real estate auctions are used to identify bidding strategies and related motivations. Second, the authors apply SEM by using data from 1,078 exclusive auction journals from real estate sales in Norway to study both the direct and indirect price effects of the bidding strategies.

The authors define four aggressive bidding strategies: high opening bid, high bid increase (jump bids), short acceptance deadline and short response time. The authors find that all four strategies yield a higher sales price. Bidders can actively influence the behaviour of the other participants and cool the potential auction fever, thus reducing the final price premium.

This paper gives households, investors and policymakers a better understanding of how bidding strategies affect real estate auctions and the final price.

This paper aims to empirically test the effect of list price and bidding strategies in ascending auctions of residential real estate.

Three regression models are estimated, using a unique data set from 629 condominium apartments in the inner-city of Stockholm, Sweden, sold between January 2010 and December 2011.

The results show that jump bidding has the predicted effect of reducing competition by scaring off bidders. However, a higher average bid increment leads to a higher selling price. Furthermore, results show that a fast auction in terms of average time between bids acts to increase the probability of so-called auction fever as both the number of bidders and the selling price are positively correlated with the speed of the auction. While the average behavior of all auction participants, in terms of jump bidding and time between bids, significantly affects auction outcomes, differences in strategies applied by winners and losers show mixed results. The results of this study with respect to sellers’ list price strategy show that underpricing is an ineffective strategy in terms of enticing more bidders to participate in the auction. Furthermore, underpricing is not sufficient to have a positive effect on the selling price.

This paper is one of the first papers to empirically analyze how different bidding strategies affect the outcome of residential real estate auctions in terms of competition and the final selling price.

The aim of this case study is to review the in-depth (and successful) investigation carried out in 2016 by the Italian Competition Authority [Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM)] on a nation-wide (multi-lot) framework agreement for consulting services. We also critically assess the tender design and emphasize which dimensions may have facilitated the uncovered anticompetitive agreement.

The case study borrows from the official Antitrust Authorities’ findings and from the tender documents to paint a comprehensive picture of the cartel’s strategy.

The case study emphasizes that AGCM’s the “conjectured logic” of the cartel’s behaviour (endogenous evidence) did coincide with those pieces of evidence seized by police forces for criminal crimes at the cartel members’ premises (exogeneous evidence). This infrequent feature of bidding rings investigations underlines the importance of theoretical as well as practical analyses of cartels’ behaviour in public procurement markets.

As the antitrust investigation was triggered by a confidential report sent by the awarding authority (Consip, the Italian national central purchasing body), the case study also emphasizes the importance of informal as well as formal co-operation between awarding authorities, especially central purchasing bodies, and competition authorities.

The case study belongs to a small set of applied research papers attempting at building a bridge between public procurement design, particularly of sizeable framework agreements, and the mechanisms devised by cartels to “game” procurement procedures. All this is accomplished by looking at all design dimensions that were exploited by cartel’s members.