The importance of reputation in awarding public contracts

The main economic literature emphasizes that the efficiency of the awarding procedure depends on the contractual rules, especially those regarding firm’s remuneration. In this work we show the existence of a reverse link: when the enforcement of contractual terms is imperfect, the rules of the awarding mechanism can help to improve the efficiency of the contractual relationship. In some circumstances, awarding rules based only on bids are not able to deal with the problem of opportunistic behaviour during the execution of the contract. Our model points out that the public administration can incentivize the contractor’s fairness by considering not only competitors’ bids, but also their different reputation.