The purpose of this paper is to discuss the economic and legal rationale for the use of the competitive dialogue in complex procurement. The authors use the data set of public contracts awarded by European Union (EU) member states between 2010 and 2017 to analyse its usage patterns. In particular, the authors identify the types of contracting authorities that mainly use the procedure, the sectors and contract characteristics and the role of institutional factors related to the country’s perceived corruption and level of innovativeness.,The authors discuss economic and legal issues in the use of the competitive dialogue. The authors use a data set of public contracts awarded by EU member states, published on the EU’s public procurement portal Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) to analyse usage patterns and explore the types of contracting authorities that use the procedure, the sectors and type of tenders. The data covers a sample of 1.242.090 observations, which relates to all the contract award notices published on TED in the period 2010-2017 for all the 28 European member states. A probit model is used as a methodology.,The empirical analysis reveals that the use of competitive value is greater for larger value contracts, for national rather than local authorities, for the supply of other manufactured products and machinery; for research and development and business, as well as information technology services; and for construction works. The level of perceived corruption and the gross domestic product/capita do not have explanatory power in the use of the procedure, whilst a country’s degree of innovativeness, as measured by the global innovation index, positively affects the probability of adopting the procedure. A decreasing trend in the use of competitive dialogue over time is observed.,In conclusion, the countries examined benefited from a long tradition of public–private partnerships (PPPs) and from a transposition of the 2004 directive, able to provide an inclusive interpretation of complexity, and therefore, stimulate the adoption of the competitive dialogue in different sectors. Conversely, the countries, which postponed a concrete transposition and the overcoming of the confusing concept of complexity, limited the scope for the application of competitive dialogue, relying on the easier alternative: the negotiated procedure. Those circumstances lead to visible difficulties in stimulating the adoption of the procedure even in the traditional sectors; indeed, only with the new directive’s provisions a slight change in the trend can be seen.,To foster the use of the competitive dialogue in countries that have so far used it to a limited extent is important to improve upon the definition of complexity and learn from the experience of the top usage countries, as identified in the analysis.,Helping the use of the procedure may facilitate the procurement of complex contracts such as PPPs, and thus, ease the building and management of public infrastructures for the provision of public services.,The authors are not aware of previous studies that have used the TED data set and studied the law in a number of European countries so as to understand the usage patterns for the competitive dialogue.

中文翻译：

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竞争性对话：经济和法律评估

本文的目的是讨论在复杂采购中使用竞争性对话的经济和法律依据。作者使用欧盟（EU）成员国在2010年至2017年之间授予的公共合同数据集来分析其使用模式。特别是，作者确定了主要使用该程序的订约当局的类型，部门和合同特征以及与该国认为的腐败和创新水平有关的制度因素的作用。作者讨论了使用中的经济和法律问题。竞争性对话。作者使用欧盟成员国授予的公共合同的数据集，该出版物在欧盟公共采购门户网站Tenders Electronic Daily（TED）上发布，以分析使用模式并探讨使用该程序的签约当局的类型，部门和招标类型。数据涵盖了1.242.090个观察值的样本，该观察值与TED在2010-2017年期间发布的所有28个欧洲成员国的所有合同授予通知有关。实证分析表明，竞争价值的使用更大，对于较大价值的合同，对于国家而不是地方当局，对于其他制成品和机械的供应，更大。用于研发和业务以及信息技术服务；和建筑工程。腐败程度和国内生产总值/人均国内生产总值在使用该程序方面没有解释力，而一个国家的创新程度（以全球创新指数衡量）则对采用该程序的可能性产生积极影响。观察到，随着时间的推移，使用竞争性对话的趋势呈下降趋势。总而言之，受调查的国家受益于悠久的公私伙伴关系传统（PPP）以及2004年指令的转变，能够对复杂性，因此刺激了不同部门之间竞争性对话的采用。相反，推迟了具体换位并克服了令人困惑的复杂性概念的国家限制了竞争性对话的适用范围，依靠更简单的选择：协商程序。这些情况导致即使在传统部门中，在刺激采用该程序方面也存在明显的困难；的确，只有在新指令的规定下，趋势才能发生轻微变化。在迄今为止已经有限使用该国的国家中，促进竞争性对话的使用对改善复杂性的定义和学习具有重要意义。从分析中确定的使用率最高的国家的经验来看，帮助使用该程序可能有助于采购诸如PPP之类的复杂合同，从而简化用于提供公共服务的公共基础设施的建设和管理。，