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In this dissertation I study two topics in public procurement. There are two potential sources of inefficiencies. Firstly, from the supply side, when the procurer and one of the project contractors are collusive, it can create an inefficient allocation of the project. Secondly, when the government does not have the complete information of citizen's demand on the public services, the government can experiences the inefficiency in production. The first chapter considers a situation in which a corrupt government official does not commit to using the common corruption scheme called right of first refusal in a procurement auction. Under the right of first refusal, the contractors (or bidders) participate in a sequential auction, and there is no inefficiency in project allocation. However, in cases in which the scheme is not practiced, both contractors participate in a simultaneous auction, and the disadvantaged contractor bids more aggressively than the advantaged contractor. I found that such uncertainty regarding the practice of corruption schemes can lead to inefficiency, even when the corruption scheme itself is not practiced.The second chapter studied post-disaster adaptation strategy using the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami earthquake and the resulting tsunami and nuclear meltdown. As after the catastrophe and nuclear accident citizens in the disaster site relocate themselves and save themselves from the risk of disaster, the government has concern on providing the public services including decontamination of radioactive substances. The question is whether the government's current investment in decontamination really matches the demand of evacuees. If the citizens' top priority is to avoid the health risk from radiation exposure, the government can be considered to provide the service in an efficient manner and vice versa. The results show that affected people tend to move to new locations if the risk of potential and current disaster is high. However, affected people do not move if their reservation utilities are higher as a result of difficulties in collecting information in the new locations or if they have greater attachment to their local communities. The study results show that people affected by the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant are sensitive to the risk of radiation exposure, although people who are more distant from the disaster site actually appear to show strong reactions.

This thesis focuses on the theme of detecting and managing invasive forest pests. First, we model optimal detection of sub-populations of invasive species that establish ahead of an advancing front. We find that the uninfested landscape is divided into two zones, characterized by different dynamically optimal management plans: a suppression zone and an eradication zone. In the suppression zone, optimal detection effort increases with distance from the front. At the distance where the suppression zone yields to the eradication zone, optimal detection effort plateaus at its maximum level. Second, we develop a model of optimal surveillance and control of forest pathogens and apply it to the case of oak wilt in a region within Anoka County, Minnesota. We develop a cost curve associated with the expected fraction of healthy trees saved from becoming infected. We also explore characteristics of sites selected for surveillance. In particular, we examine the characteristics of sites that make them high-priority sites for surveillance when the budget level is relatively low. We find that the best surveillance strategy is to prioritize sites with relatively low expected unit surveillance cost per tree saved from infection. Our results offer practical guidance to managers in charge of deciding how and where to spend limited public dollars when the goal is to reduce the number of trees newly infected by oak wilt. Third, we model a private landowners' forest protection problem, in which each landowner decides among three possible strategies: prevention, monitoring and treatment, and no treatment. We find that the proportion of landowners taking preventive and no action increases as the accuracy of monitoring decreases; monitoring ceases to be chosen when monitoring accuracy declines below a threshold value. We also investigate the possible effects of a policy that raises the accuracy of monitoring on social welfare in both the landowners' equilibrium and the full information social optimum. We find that the policy closes the gap in social welfare between the landowners' equilibrium and the full information social optimum. However, it decreases social welfare in the full information social optimum.