I argue that prediction is not primarily a technological means for knowing future outcomes, but social model extracting and concentrating discretionary power. Prediction ‘relational grammar’ governs this allocation of discretion: the everyday ability to define one's situation. This extractive dynamic extends long historical pattern, in which new methods producing knowledge entail redistribution...

We run a regression discontinuity design analysis to document the causal effect of increasing buyers’ discretion on procurement outcomes in a large database for public works in Italy. Works with a value above a given threshold have to be awarded through an open auction. Works below this threshold can be more easily awarded through a restricted auction, where the buyer has some discretion in ter...

Section 78 of PACE gives the courts a discretion to exclude from a criminal trial evidence which has been obtained unfairly. The section has resulted in much case law. This article is an attempt to analyse the principles which the courts use to decide whether or not to exercise the discretion to exclude. It starts by examining the decisions of the appellate courts in order to try to identify th...

Government procurement contracts generally garner a small number of bids, and it is not uncommon for only one bid to be considered. This paper quantifies multiple factors determining the extent of competition observed in the United States federal procurement data for commercially unavailable IT and telecommunications service contracts. We develop, identify, and estimate a principal-agent model ...