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essays in public finance and industrial organization a dissertation ...

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CHAPTER 4. YEAR-END SPENDING 164<br />

accounted for by contracts of more than $1 million. Seventy percent of contract<br />

spend<strong>in</strong>g is by the Department of Defense. The Department of Energy <strong>and</strong> NASA,<br />

which rely on contractors to run large labs <strong>and</strong> production facilities, <strong>and</strong> the General<br />

Services Adm<strong>in</strong>istration, which enters <strong>in</strong>to government-wide contracts <strong>and</strong> contracts<br />

on behalf of other agencies, are the next largest agencies <strong>in</strong> terms of spend<strong>in</strong>g on<br />

contracts. Twenty-n<strong>in</strong>e percent of contracts were non-competitive, 20 percent were<br />

competitive but received only a s<strong>in</strong>gle bid, <strong>and</strong> 51 percent received more than 1 bid.<br />

Sixty-five percent were fixed price, 30 percent were cost-reimbursement, <strong>and</strong> 6 percent<br />

were on a time <strong>and</strong> materials or labor hours basis.<br />

4.3.2 The With<strong>in</strong>-Year Pattern of Government Procurement<br />

Spend<strong>in</strong>g<br />

Figure 4.1 shows contract spend<strong>in</strong>g by week, pool<strong>in</strong>g data from 2004 through 2009.<br />

There is a clear spike <strong>in</strong> spend<strong>in</strong>g at the end of the year with 16.5 percent of all<br />

spend<strong>in</strong>g occurr<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the last month of the year <strong>and</strong> 8.7 percent occurr<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the<br />

last week. The bottom panel shows that when measured by the number of contracts<br />

rather than the dollar value, there is also clear evidence of an end-of-the-year spike,<br />

with 12.0 percent occurr<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the last month <strong>and</strong> 5.6 percent occurr<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the last<br />

week.<br />

Table 4.1 shows that the end of the year spend<strong>in</strong>g surge occurs <strong>in</strong> all major<br />

government agencies. If spend<strong>in</strong>g were distributed uniformly throughout the year,<br />

we would expect to see 1.9 percent <strong>in</strong> the f<strong>in</strong>al week of the year. The lowest agency<br />

percentage is 3.6 percent.<br />

Table 4.3 shows the percent of spend<strong>in</strong>g on different types of goods <strong>and</strong> services<br />

that occurs at the end of the year. The table shows some of the largest spend-<br />

<strong>in</strong>g categories along with some selected smaller categories that are very similar to<br />

the large categories. Construction-related goods <strong>and</strong> services, furnish<strong>in</strong>gs <strong>and</strong> office<br />

equipment, <strong>and</strong> I.T. services <strong>and</strong> equipment all have end-of-year spend<strong>in</strong>g rates that<br />

are significantly higher than the average. These categories of spend<strong>in</strong>g often represent<br />

areas where there is significant flexibility about tim<strong>in</strong>g for perform<strong>in</strong>g ma<strong>in</strong>tenance

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