On Monday, March 25, the “Workshop on Management and Economics of Procurement” was held at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (FCFM) of the University of Chile.
The field of public procurement, the experience of innovation in this area, and the collaboration between academia and the public sector marked the focus of the “Workshop on Management and Economics of Procurement” that was held on March 25, 2024, in the 401 of Industrial Engineering from the University of Chile.
During the day, academics from different universities in Chile and around the world presented their research that seeks to optimize – through different tools – the public market.
Among the participants were Industrial Engineering academics from the University of Chile and researchers from the MIPP Milenio Institute, José Correa, and Raimundo Undurraga.
The first to speak was Raimundo Undurraga, who presented “How managers can use purchaser performance information to improve procurement efficiency”, a study that deals with the development of machine learning algorithms for the construction of reports on spending on public purchases.
“The algorithm effectively and simply organizes information already existing in the public procurement system, providing efficiency metrics in the use of public resources that have the potential to improve the monitoring capacity of heads of services on the purchasing behavior of buyers and purchasing units within the services,” said the MIPP researcher.
“At the same time, we implemented an experimental evaluation to measure the causal impact of the reports on the efficiency of public spending in Chile. This technological innovation, whose marginal cost of design and implementation is close to zero, proved to be enormously cost effective, generating savings in public spending in amounts on the order of 0.1% of GDP,” added Raimundo Undurraga.
This study was developed by Raimundo Undurraga (DII, U.Chile & MIPP), together with the leadership of academic Marcelo Olivares (FEN U.Chile & ISCI), in addition to the collaboration of Pablo Celhay (PUC Chile) and Paul Gertler (UC Berkeley ).
Regarding the importance of holding workshops on this topic, Raimundo Undurraga expressed that “to our knowledge, this event constitutes the first concrete effort born from the academic world to bring together academia and politics to discuss public procurement policy in a scientific and applied perspective. Chili. We hope to repeat this event annually.”
José Correa presented “Matching and Procurement Systems”, which deals with the school admission system (SAE) developed in collaboration with the public sector in Chile, a project he led.
In this regard, the Industrial Engineering academic and MIPP researcher pointed out that “the gradual nature of the implementation of innovations in the public sector is important. It allows gradual learning. The interaction mediated by technologies is delicate and we must not forget that the end The last thing is to support people.
Two international Keynote Speakers were also present: Francesco Decarolis from Bocconi University, Italy, and Gabriel Weintraub from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Gabriel Weintraub expressed the importance of innovation in public markets “It seems to me that it is fundamental, innovation in public markets is very important. There have been many advances in recent decades in an area of economics called market design, which is thinking about what rules markets should have to achieve certain objectives, such as efficiency or reducing spending.
“The latter are very important objectives in the public markets. At the same time, we have also made a lot of progress in online platforms, in data science, which are also very important elements to innovate in public markets,” added the academic from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Furthermore, regarding the “Workshop on Management and Economics of Procurement”, he emphasized that “I think it is important to see what is being done, the cutting-edge research that is being done, successful practical applications that are being done outside the country and also what is being done in Chile.”
“We have also shared successful experiences that are being done in Chile and to continue to look to the future and see what other important innovations can be made in Chile in public procurement markets,” concluded Gabriel Weintraub.
The workshop was organized by the MIPP Milenio Institute, the Complex Engineering Systems Institute, Industrial Engineering U. de Chile, ANID Centers, and the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Chile.
Thank you very much to everyone who participated! Here you can see some photos of how the “Workshop on Management and Economics of Procurement” developed.
MIPP Chile 2024