These arguments all support the idea that repeated partners will be more costly, and thus less profitable, than new partners, which we formally state below:Hypothesis 2a. For a given level of outsourcing, the greater the proportion of repeated partners, the lower the prime contractor’s profitability.Hypothesis 2b. For a given level of outsourcing, the deeper the relationships with repeated partners, the lower the prime contractor’s profitability.In sum, we posit that there are differential performance effects of using repeated partners. Although the coordination, collaboration, and adaptation advantages of repeated partners will enhance revenue, the disadvantages of potential opportunism, muted efficiency incentives, and overlooking alternate and more technically capable partners will increase costs and decrease profitability. These effects occur both at the systemic and the dyadic levels. We now turn to the bridge construction sector, from which we gathered project-level data to test these hypotheses.