L'ASTA PESATA PER LA REPUTAZIONE: UNA POSSIBILE SOLUZIONE AL PROBLEMA DELLA QUALITA' NEGLI APPALTI PUBBLICI

When procurement contracts are awarded through competitive tendering and quality dimensions are not contractible, that is, not verifiable by contracting parties and by courts, selected contractors my find it profitable to renege ex post on their promises by opportunistically delivering lower quality standards. To face this moral hazard problem, we assume that Public Administration may handicap the opportunistic firm in the next competitive tendering. We prove that, under complete information, the PA finds it optimal to punish the opportunistic firm with a level at least equal to higher cost borne. The only constraint the buyer needs to respect is that the punishment must be dynamically credible, that, in fact, is what we show in last section of the paper. Finally we show that this mechanism increases the social welfare, being the quality an “important” aspect for the collectivity