> A central premise of the federal procurement system is that “full and fair competition“ on a “level playing field“ means that competitors are asked to make th

> A central premise of the federal procurement system is that “full and fair competition“ on a “level playing field“ means that competitors are asked to make their best bids without knowing what the other has bid or will bid. That principle ensures that companies seeking to do business with the federal government offer their best price from the beginning. No, it doesn't. This is known as a first-price sealed bid auction. It guarantees they will roughly speaking offer the government the highest price they think they will win at, not their lowest price. For a more detailed analysis see the wikipedia aritcle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_auction The "standard" (mathematical) answer to getting this property would be to run a second-price sealed bid auction, where the winner is the player with the lowest bid, but they get paid the amount of the second lowest bid, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction I'm not sure how you would best adjust this system for non-identical goods.