Changes in european defence procurement and industrial capabilities

The impact of defence procurement on a country's industrial and technological base can be considerable—among NATO countries, the USA, Britain and France stand out in this regard. Equally, concern is also often expressed about how to safeguard the civil technology base as a necessary foundation for security, broadly conceived. This article examines the changes taking place in the UK, and more broadly in Europe, regarding defence procurement: first, by examining arguments and events regarding defence R&D; and second, through analysing procurement issues relating especially to industrial structures and strategies. Much strategic repositioning by firms is currently taking place, often encouraged by governments, who seem to lack adequate means of regulating the restructuring, thereby creating unintended problems.     

Corruption and competition in procurement

We consider a procurement problem in which the procurement agent is supposed to allocate the realization of a project according to a competitive mechanism that values bids in terms of the proposed price and quality. Potential bidders have private information about their production costs. Since the procurement agent is also in charge of verifying delivered quality, in exchange for a bribe, he can allow an arbitrary firm to be awarded the realization of the project and to produce a quality level lower than that announced. We compute equilibrium corruption and we study the impact on corruption of the competitiveness of the environment, and in particular of: (i) an increase in the number of potential suppliers of the good or service to be procured, and (ii) an increase of competition in the market for procurement agents. We identify the effects that influence equilibrium corruption and show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, corruption may well be increasing in competition.     

Mergers and acquisitions in the european union frame

In the first step, the research analyzes the different European waves of mergers and acquisitions and the restructuring market characteristics. It is followed by a study of such corporate restructuring methods as divestitures, spin-offs, split-ups, split-offs, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and equity carveouts, paying special attention to corporate mergers and acquisitions, the different types and their diversity of targets. The European situation regarding mergers and acquisitions, their different characteristics, and the way to do them are studied in the tables.     

Quality cut-offs in procurement auctions

Recently the Government of India used procurement auction mechanisms with endogenously determined minimum quality. We find these auctions have no equilibrium in continuous symmetric monotonic pure strategies. This may substantiate the use of auction mechanisms with exogenously determined minimum quality.     

Monetary policy design in the european union: Problems and possibilities

The main goal of this paper is to estimate if the money supply and interest rate in the various European Union countries are exogenous or endogenous. This analysis turns is essential since, if both variables happened to be endogenous, the search for another variable to be used as a proximate target could be tried. Some authors have suggested that the exchange rate is likely to be that variable.     

Subsidizing (and taxing) business procurement

This paper studies the effect of a subsidy (or tax) on a market where a downstream manufacturer uses a competitive tender to procure inputs from upstream suppliers. Subsidizing input production can result in input price decreases that are greater than the effective decrease in marginal costs. That is, overshifting occurs. When the size of the subsidy is not too large, the downstream firm can enjoy an increase in profits greater than the government expenditure on the subsidy. A relatively weak sufficient condition for these results to hold is that suppliers earn a positive profit margin on the marginal unit sold, before taking into account any subsidy payment. Stronger sufficient conditions, tailored to each result, are provided.     

Selection criteria and the award procedure in public procurement

This paper examines the admissibility of some selection criteria in the light of European public procurement law. It also points out the opportunity of using such criteria through an economic analysis. The main aspect to be dealt with is the numerical selection criteria, which may hinder firms not fulfilling them from participating in the award procedure. These criteria refer, according to the European Union directives on public procurement, to the economic, financial, and technical capacity of the candidate firms. In our analysis, the legal appreciation should be confronted with an economic analysis of the numerical selection criteria. This analysis is based on an arithmetic approach which focuses on relative rather than absolute values. Thus, through a series of performance indicators, an alternative approach to the above criteria is presented. This paper does not reflect the official position of the Commission of the EU.     

Mediating effect of technological innovation capabilities between dynamic capabilities and competitiveness of research and technology organisations

Technological innovation capabilities (TICs) are important for organisations to obtain core competencies and competitive advantages. This study assesses the relationship between dynamic capabilities (DCs) and TICs, and analyses the effect of TICs on competitiveness in research and technology organisations. The article presents an empirical evidence from a survey of Iranian large public research institute (LPRI). In order to explore the relationship among the constructs of the survey, the model was proposed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results of confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the measurement scale of the variables is valid. Moreover, SEM confirmed that both TICs and DCs enhance competitiveness. Finally, it was indicated that TICs play a mediating role in the relationship between DCs and competitiveness.     

Public procurement policy and the Czech industry

The aim of this paper is to specify the extent of buy-national policies of the Czech Republic and the impact of opening its public procurement market to domestic production and employment due to the Europe Agreements of 1995. Two series of indicators are proposed for measuring the impact of Czech buy-national policies. The first series outlines the behavior of the public sector vis-à-vis domestic production and imports. The second series sketches the industrial structure of the sectors which, following the above analysis, seem to be protected by preferential public procurement. The interaction of both series of indicators can provide information about the level of protection in terms of public procurement on a sectoral level. This paper is part of the Phare Program of Action for Cooperation in Economics, a research project launched by the Commission of the European Union. The authors gratefully acknowledge contributions by Andrew Cox and anonymous project referees. The authors are responsible for any remaining errors.     

政府采购专家资源的整合与管理

现行政府采购制度引进专家评审机制,实现了政府经济支出行为的程序化和规范化。政府采购评审专家代表政府依法行使采购项目评审权利,对政府采购专家资源进行有效整合与管理成为政府采购活动中关键的一环。本文分析了我国政府采购专家资源的现状及存在问题,提出了组建专家库的方法和评审专家在项目前、中、后期的合理应用,并给出专家的考核管理办法。     

Decentralized computation procurement and computational robustness in a smart market

Summary. Several `smart market' mechanisms have recently appeared in the literature. These mechanisms combine a computer network that collects bids from agents with a central computer that selects a schedule of bids to fill based upon maximization of revenue or trading surplus. Potential problems exist when this optimization involves combinatorial difficulty sufficient to overwhelm the central computer. This paper explores the use of a computation procuring clock auction to induce human agents to approximate the solutions to discrete constrained optimization problems. Economic and computational properties of the auction are studied through a series of laboratory experiments. The experiments are designed around a potential application of the auction as a secondary institution that approximates the solution to difficult computational problems that occur within the primary `smart market', and show that the auction is effective and robust in eliciting and processing suggestions for improved schedules. Received: November 5, 1996; revised version: September 30, 1997     

The exchange rate mechanism's role in the european monetary system

The European Community was established with the intent of reaching full economic, monetary, and political union among its member countries. The three elements of the European Monetary System—the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the European Currency Unit, and the European Monetary Fund—were designed to work together to achieve monetary integration among the member states. German reunification, as a result of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, played an important role in the failure of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Many steps will need to be taken in order for the European community to obtain full economic and monetary union.     

Global dynamics,capabilities and the crisis

The financial crisis started in 2007–8, initially in the US, but its consequences have been felt throughout the global economy. However, its effects were far from uniform. While parts of Asia and Africa continued to grow fast, Europe experienced a large set back. This paper emphasizes three important factors: differences across countries in technological development; differences in capacities to exploit the opportunities offered by technology; and differences in the ability to compete in international market. A formal model, based on this approach, is developed and applied to data for 100 countries in the period 1997–2012. Empirical indicators reflecting the various factors are developed, a dataset constructed and econometric estimates of the model performed. The results are used to explore the factors behind the slowdown in economic growth, with a particular emphasis on the continuing stagnation in Europe. A major factor turns out to be the increased financialization of the economy. The negative effect of the growth of finance prior to the crisis is especially pronounced for the countries that suffered most during the crisis.     

Socially optimal procurement with tight budgets and rationing

We investigate the behaviour of a social planner that secures the supply of a good, e.g. an environmental benefit, through contracting with private agents. While the social planner seeks to maximise net social benefits, she is also controlled with a fixed budget. Private agents are profit maximising and hold private information concerning their variable costs of production. They also have known fixed costs of contracting. We find that budget constraints and fixed costs change the optimal contract design in more than one way: the social planner minimises costs, rations high-cost contracts to reduce fixed costs and information rents, and distorts contracts for all agent types, including low-cost agents. We find that rationing improves social welfare. Also, even though social costs – including tax distortion – are explicitly taken into consideration, they do not affect the design of optimal contracts when budgets are tight. In those cases the budget constraint dominates the solution.