Procurement and Infrastructure Costs / Zachary Liscow, Will Nober, Cailin Slattery.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Liscow, Zachary.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Nober, Will.

Slattery, Cailin.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w31705.

NBER working paper series no. w31705

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2023.

Summary:

Infrastructure costs in the United States are high and rising. The procurement process is one potential cost driver. In this paper we conduct a survey of procurement practices across the 50 states. We survey both employees at each state department of transportation (DOT) and the road builders that win contracts to build and maintain roads. With this survey we are able to create a new dataset of procurement rules and practices across the U.S. and understand what actors on the ground think drive costs. We then assemble a new dataset of project-level infrastructure costs. We correlate the survey practices with our new, detailed data on costs. We find that two important inputs in the procurement process appear to particularly drive costs: (1) the capacity of the DOT procuring the project and (2) the lack of competition in the market for government construction contracts.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2023.