This paper studies how a federal procurement regulation, known as the Truth in Negotiations Act (TINA), affects the competitiveness and execution of government contracts. TINA stipulates how contracting officials (COs) can ensure reasonable prices. Following TINA, for contracts above a certain size threshold, COs can no longer rely solely on their own judgment that a price is reasonable. Instead, they must either require suppliers to provide accounting data supporting their proposed prices or expect multiple bids. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that above-threshold contracts experience greater competition (i.e., more bids), improved performance (i.e., less frequent renegotiations and cost overruns), and reduced use of the harder-to-monitor cost-plus pricing, compared to below-threshold contracts. These findings suggest that TINA's requirements enhance competition and oversight for above-threshold contracts.

中文翻译：

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亮出你的手：采购合同中公平定价要求的影响


本文研究了联邦采购法规（称为“谈判真相法案”（TINA））如何影响政府合同的竞争力和执行。 TINA 规定了订约官员 (CO) 如何确保合理的价格。继 TINA 之后，对于超过一定规模阈值的合约，CO 不能再仅仅依靠自己的判断来判断价格是否合理。相反，他们必须要么要求供应商提供支持其提议价格的会计数据，要么期待多个投标。使用回归不连续性设计，我发现高于阈值的合同会经历更大的竞争（即更多的出价）、更高的性能（即更少的重新谈判和成本超支）以及减少对难以监控的成本加成定价的使用，与低于阈值的合约相比。这些调查结果表明，TINA 的要求加强了对高于阈值的合同的竞争和监督。