Transparency in Buyer‐Determined Auctions: Should Quality be Private or Public?

We study buyer‐determined procurement auctions where both price and non‐price characteristics of bidders matter for being awarded a contract. Although, in scoring auctions bidders perfectly know how price and non‐price attributes determine the awarding of the contract, this remains uncertain in buyer‐determined auctions where the buyer is free to choose once all bids have been submitted. We analyze the impact of information bidders have with respect to the buyer's awarding decision. As we show theoretically whether it is in the buyer's interest to conceal the impact of non‐price characteristics depends on how important the quality aspects of the procured good are to the buyer: The more important quality aspects are, the more interesting concealment becomes. In a counterfactual analysis using data from a large European procurement platform, we analyze the reduction of non‐price information available to the bidders. Confirming our hypothesis, for auction categories where bidders’ non‐price characteristics strongly influence buyers’ decisions concealment of non‐price information leads to an increase in buyers’ surplus of up to 15% due to higher competitive pressure and lower bids. Conversely, for categories where bidders’ non‐price characteristics are of little importance concealment of non‐price information leads to a decrease in buyers’ surplus of up to 6%.