We provide evidence that the effect of competitiveness on the efficiency of governmental procurement auctions is non-linear. Analyses from data containing 1,366,002 procurement auctions in Brazil between 2015-2018 shows that both the number of participants of an auction and the number of bids are associated to a greater efficiency of procuring an item (i.e., lower prices compared to the estimated price of the item). However, the interaction between these two variables is also significant. We show that this is driven from a fiercer competition in auctions with more participants (i.e., the average difference between the bids is higher). We also show that this effect is concentrated on bigger and more specialized firms (firms that have won the most auctions, and firms with larger contributed capital), and also for firms that are located in the same state as the government unit. Finally, this non-linearity of efficiency is also equally distributed between the classes of products that are procured by the federal government of Brazil.
Comissão Organizadora
Anderson Odias da Silva
Claudia Yoshinaga
Ricardo D. Brito
Felipe Saraiva Iachan
Vinicius Augusto Brunassi Silva
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