Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper assesses the effects of changes in scoring weights in auctions, using a unique sample of biddings of private Welfare-to-Work (WTW) organizations to reintegrate groups of unemployed and disabled workers. WTW-organizations did not only bid on prices, but also received points for three proxies of the quality of their services: their reputation, a description of their intended methodology to reintegrate workers and the fraction of job placements they considered likely to achieve. We exploit the fact that the scoring weights of these items changed in the time period under consideration, while the broad classification of ('gross') worker types remained similar over time. Our estimation results show that increases in the scoring weights of the quality items result in higher price bids, particularly of WTW-firms that are bidding for the first time as entrants. For the WTW-firms that won the procurements, we find a higher weight for both the reputation and the methodology item to contribute to the job placement of workers.JEL Classification: D44, I38

In this note, we experimentally examine the relative performance of price-only auctions and multi-attribute auctions. We do so in procurement settings where the buyer can give the winning bidder incentives to exert effort on non-price dimensions after the auction. Both auctions theoretically implement the surplus maximizing mechanism. Our experiment confirms this result. Moreover, we observe that the "pie" is shared the same in both auctions between buyer and suppliers both in theory and in the lab (after accounting for learning effects).

The design of tenders and contracts is a crucial factor in the success or failure of the contracting-out of reintegration services. In a laboratory experiment with professionals from private reintegration service providers, we tested two tender designs. In the first design, the government announces a predetermined amount that will be paid for each employment outcome. Participants then bid an amount of money that they are prepared to pay to operate the contract. This auction resembles contracting in the Australian Job Network and the British Employment Zones. The second design is the lowest-reward auction. In this auction, the participants bid a reward. The lowest bid wins the contract, and the reward is then paid for each unit of effort. The lowest-reward auction is similar to the current tendering practice in the Netherlands. We find that an auction with a fixed reward per placement is more efficient, yields more effort from the winner, and results in higher welfare than an auction in which bidders compete on the basis of the reward per placement. We derive this conclusion from both our theoretical analysis and data from our laboratory experiment with professional bidders.

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