Collusive bidding in road construction. Road construction contracts in the state of Florida are awarded on the basis of competitive, sealed bids; the contractor who submits the lowest bid price wins the contract. During the 1980s, the Office of the Florida Attorney General (FLAG) suspected numerous contractors of practicing bid collusion (i.e., setting the winning bid price above the fair, or competitive, price in order to increase profit margin). By comparing the bid prices (and other important bid variables) of the fixed (or rigged) contracts to the competitively bid contracts, FLAG was able to establish invaluable benchmarks for detecting future bid-rigging. FLAG collected data for 279 road construction contracts. For each contract, the following variables shown in the table below were measured. (The data are saved in the file named FLAG2.)