公共产品技术创新中政府技术获取的策略研究

Technological Procurement Strategies of Governments based on Public Goods Technological Innovation

为了向社会提供更加高效的公共产品和服务,政府部门通常会采用招标拍卖或者竞价谈判方式激励企业投入研发,参与公共产品技术创新。本文以两个异质性的投标企业为研究对象,研究了考虑存在技术不确定时,政府部门作为采购者该如何在招标拍卖(包括固定奖励竞赛与第一价格拍卖)与竞价谈判两种竞争方式中进行选择的问题。分析了采用招标拍卖方式情况下,政府部门提供支付额度的变化对投标商研发投入产生的影响。最后使用算例揭示了给定技术不确定性的分布函数时,两个投标商研发能力的差别以及高能力投标商的谈判能力变化对政府选择最优采购方式的影响。这对认识公共产品技术创新问题有着一定的理论和实践意义。

Governments have been looking for ways to innovate public goods. One of the main barriers to technology innovation of public goods is that there is a disconnection between what is required by the end-users of a product and what is being developed by research organizations and suppliers in relation to such products. Public sectors decide the optimal procurement method and use it to improve on the decision of research bodies＇ R＆D investment. Three popular procurement mechanisms were compared in this study： fixed-prize tournaments, first-price auctions and sequential negotiations. Our research questions are： How much money should be devoted to R＆D？ Which incentive mechanism is mostly likely to achieve the desired goals？ All parties are risk-neutral. The buyer cannot charge entry fees. A firm＇s investment strategy and the realization of the random innovation are non-observable. Both qualities are observed by the buyer and each firm. However, qualities are non-verifiable. Third parties can only verify whether a firm submits a bid. To compare the efficiency of three incentive mechanisms, we must first analyze the R＆D investment strategy of two heterogeneous bidders with stochastic innovations. Given the cumulative distribution function of quality difference, we demonstrate that with the increase in the bargaining power of the efficient bidder in sequential negotiations, buyers＇ utility is significantly reduced. If the difference of corporate R＆D capabilities between two bidders is distinct, sequential contracting will dominate from the perspective of R＆D risks. If the difference of corporate R＆D capabilities between two bidders is low and bargaining capacity of high-capacity enterprise is low, sequential contracting are superior to auctions. The auction method dominates along with the increase of the bargaining ability of high-capacity enterprises. In the condition that the procurers decide to purchase products via auctions, the fixed-prize tournarnent is better than the first price auction if the R＆D risk lower （t value is lower）. When R＆D risk and the degree of difference between the two bidders＇ research and development capabilities are increased, the first price auction is superior to fixed-prize tournament. When the degree of difference between the two tenders＇ R＆D capacity is reduced, fixed-prize tournament is still better than the first-price auction. In summary, technological procurement by governments provides the option to pay for knowledge out of general revenue. We compared three kinds of incentive schemes from a normative point of view, and improved the understanding of technological innovation of pubic goods. Future research may want to extend our proposed model to three or more bidders, and investigate the effect of subsidies and technology spillover on the public sector＇s technological innovation.