Bidding behaviors in public procurement.

Summary This thesis proposes an economic analysis of several themes that were privileged during the reflection prior to the reform of the public procurement code. It examines the treatment of abnormally low bids, the framework for subcontracting and the choice of a contract. On the basis of a legal and economic analysis, the first chapter shows that an abnormally low bid does not necessarily constitute a predatory price. The second chapter then shows that the negative ex-post profits of certain contract holders are not due to the award of contracts according to the criterion of the lowest bidder, but to a lack of rationality on the part of firms in their apprehension of the uncertain cost of the contract. With regard to the supervision of subcontracting, the aim of the third chapter is to determine whether the public purchaser should impose the announcement of the conditions of subcontracting at the time of the submission of tenders or authorize it after the award of contracts. We determine the conditions for preferring one or the other policy. We also show that the rule that minimizes the expected price is not necessarily the one that leads to the highest probability of obtaining ex-post regret from the contractor. The fourth chapter analyzes the choice of a contract in a context of anti-selection, moral hazard and exogenous uncertainty about the total cost of the contract. A formalization of the procedure with fixed prices renegotiable by riders shows that it remains dominated by a linear incentive contract. We then propose a modification of the payment rule when the firm obtains a rider. We then determine the conditions under which the public purchaser should use either this new contract or a linear incentive contract. Various environments are considered, regarding the public purchaser's objective, the bidders' attitude towards risk, and the audit performance.