Abstract

The current European regulation on public procurement recognizes the Most Economically Advantageous Tender as the main award criterion for awarding public contracts through competitive procedures. This leaves, though, public buyers with potentially many options for evaluating tenders. This paper discusses the main economic features of «scoring rules», that is, the mathematical methods to attribute financial scores. We consider a class of scoring rule commonly used in Italy, with a particular focus on the likely impact on the degree of (price) competition and the interaction with other elements of competitive tendering design.