Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Business Administration

This dissertation addresses the relative importance of price and non-price criteria in sourcing decisions from three distinct perspectives. Each essay is motivated by the same problem: that organizations tend to unintentionally overweight cost minimization objectives in their sourcing decisions. In the first of three essays, I show that excessively price-based decision-making is a widespread problem in sourcing. To do this, I combined two sources of data on contract awards by the US federal government. I applied coarsened exact matching to identify cases where contracts were awarded using different criteria in similar situations. I then used logistic regression to show that when non-price criteria are weighted more heavily, the same contractor is more likely to receive awards for similar work in the future. This relationship is absent when there is a requirement for the decision-maker to provide written justification for the use of the more price-based approach, allowing me to infer a solution to the problem identified. In the second essay, I investigate whether the procurement profession's identity influences the relative importance of price in supplier selection decisions. I first conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with current practitioners, eliciting their comments on: their level of identification with the procurement profession; procurement's group image; others' perceptions of procurement's group image; and, procurement's status within their organization. Drawing from the observed variation in responses, I designed and conducted a scenario-based experiment. I find that strong identification with the procurement profession can contribute to more price-based sourcing decisions. In the third essay, I expand my focus from procurement professionals to a broader set of professions that commonly contribute to sourcing decisions: supply management, engineering, and marketing. Seeking to understand how these different perspectives influence (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Gray (Advisor); James Hill (Advisor); Christian Blanco (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Management; Operations Research

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Political Science

This dissertation presents, in its three essays, a novel test of the so-called tradeoff hypothesis for the prevalence of political corruption; a new method for measuring corruption risk in public procurement; and tests of whether rent-seeking in local procurement can be prevented by accountability from different levels of government and of whether this rent-seeking negatively effects important public policy outcomes. The first set of analyses contradict the theoretical underpinning of the tradeoff hypothesis; the analyses using public procurement data present new and robust evidence that rent-seeking sands the wheels of government. This dissertation's methods, as well as its results and their implications, advance our understanding of the consequences of political corruption and present paths for future research on political corruption.

Committee: Sara Watson (Committee Chair); Jan Pierskalla (Committee Member); Sarah Brooks (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Economics

In this dissertation I study two topics in public procurement. There are two potential sources of inefficiencies. Firstly, from the supply side, when the procurer and one of the project contractors are collusive, it can create an inefficient allocation of the project. Secondly, when the government does not have the complete information of citizen's demand on the public services, the government can experiences the inefficiency in production. The first chapter considers a situation in which a corrupt government official does not commit to using the common corruption scheme called right of first refusal in a procurement auction. Under the right of first refusal, the contractors (or bidders) participate in a sequential auction, and there is no inefficiency in project allocation. However, in cases in which the scheme is not practiced, both contractors participate in a simultaneous auction, and the disadvantaged contractor bids more aggressively than the advantaged contractor. I found that such uncertainty regarding the practice of corruption schemes can lead to inefficiency, even when the corruption scheme itself is not practiced. The second chapter studied post-disaster adaptation strategy using the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami earthquake and the resulting tsunami and nuclear meltdown. As after the catastrophe and nuclear accident citizens in the disaster site relocate themselves and save themselves from the risk of disaster, the government has concern on providing the public services including decontamination of radioactive substances. The question is whether the government's current investment in decontamination really matches the demand of evacuees. If the citizens' top priority is to avoid the health risk from radiation exposure, the government can be considered to provide the service in an efficient manner and vice versa. The results show that affected people tend to move to new locations if the risk of potential and current disaster (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gene Mumy (Committee Chair); Lixin Ye (Committee Co-Chair); Hajime Miyazaki (Committee Member) Subjects: Economics