Chapters, articles

Data Science Meets Political Economy: Applications to Legislative Favouritism around the World

Benoit, Cyril; Brenner, Dominik & Fazekas, Mihály (2025) Data Science Meets Political Economy: Applications to Legislative Favouritism around the World. In Sarah Giest, Bram Klievink, Alex Ingrams, and Matt Young (eds.): Handbook of Governance and Data Science. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. Chapter 3.

Merging governance studies and data science, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of how these fields interact with each other, driving a greater understanding of and guidance for the data-driven transformation of government.

Bringing together contributions from …

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The impact of emergencies on corruption risks: Italian natural disasters and public procurement

Fazekas, Mihály; Nishchal, Shrey & Soreide, Tina (2025) The impact of emergencies on corruption risks: Italian natural disasters and public procurement. Regulation & Governance.

 

Theory and case studies suggest that emergencies and disasters increase corruption, especially in public procurement, hampering relief and reconstruction efforts. Despite a growing interest in the topic, including in research, there is still little systematic evidence about these effects, their structure and trajectories. We set out to investigate the medium-term impact of disasters on corruption …

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The political economy of open contracting reforms in low‐ and middle‐income countries

Adam, I., Dávid‐Barrett, E., & Fazekas, M. (2024). The political economy of open contracting reforms in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Governance, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12897

Transparency reforms make government contracting more open and amenable to public scrutiny, helping to improve public spending efficiency. But they are also politically sensitive, complex and highly technical, which makes them especially difficult to implement if state capacity is weak. Our research on nine low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia systematically assesses progress in improving …

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Predicting pharmaceutical prices. Advances based on purchase-level data and machine learning

Mihály Fazekas, Zdravko Veljanov and Alexandre Borges de Oliveira (2024) Predicting pharmaceutical prices. Advances based on purchase-level data and machine learning. BMC Public Health 24. Article 1888. 

Background

Increased costs in the health sector have put considerable strain on the public budgets allocated to pharmaceutical purchases. Faced with such pressures amplified by financial crises and pandemics, national purchasing authorities are presented with a puzzle: how to procure pharmaceuticals of the highest quality for the lowest price. The literature explored a …

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Global Contract-level Public Procurement Dataset

Mihály Fazekas, Bence Toth, Aly Abdou and Ahmed Al-Shaibani (2024) Global Contract-level Public Procurement Dataset. Data in Brief. 2024. april.

One-third of total government spending across the globe goes to public procurement, amounting to about 10 trillion dollars a year. Despite its vast size and crucial importance for economic and political developments, there is a lack of globally comparable data on contract awards and tenders run. To fill this gap, this article introduces the Global Public Procurement Dataset (GPPD). Using …

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Collusion Risk in Corporate Networks

Isabela Villamil, János Kertész, and Mihály Fazekas (2024) Collusion Risk in Corporate Networks. Scientific Reports, 14.

Collusion among economic operators increases prices, reduces product quality, and hinders innovation. Structural links can affect the incentive and ability of firms to behave competitively by facilitating collusion. We use a network-based approach to study the relationship between ownership links and bidding behavior in procurement markets. We build temporal multiplex networks based on firms’ ownership and co-bidding ties to find network measures that may …

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Data Analytics for Anti-Corruption in Public Procurement

Poltoratskaia, Viktoriia & Fazekas, Mihály (2024) Data Analytics for Anti-Corruption in Public Procurement. In Sope Williams and Jessica Tillipman (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Public Procurement Corruption. Chapter 4. Routledge.

This chapter describes and analyses the ways in which data analytics can be used for countering corruption in public procurement. It also discusses the main challenges for effective data-driven anti corruption in public procurement. We propose a simple conceptual framework, which distinguishes petty and grand corruption. Depending on the type of …

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Corruption Risks in Emergencies

Fazekas, Mihály & Nishchal, Shrey (2023) Corruption Risks in Emergencies. In Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Corruption Law. Chapter 38. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Following disasters, governments need to implement a range of responses, including the procurement of essential supplies in a short time to fulfil urgent needs. Good procurement principles such as open competition and value for money may hamper timely emergency response. Therefore, emergency clauses, which allow for deviations from open competition, are a standard component of government procurement laws. …

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Elections and Corruption: Incentives to Steal or Incentives to Invest?

Fazekas, M., Hellmann, O. (2023) Elections and Corruption: Incentives to Steal or Incentives to Invest?. Studies in Comparative International Development. 

By now, most political systems around the world hold regular multiparty elections of different quality and type. However, we know relatively little about the effect of elections on corruption, especially in high-discretion, public procurement contracts implementing development aid. To address this gap in the literature, we employ unmatched comparisons and matching estimators to analyze a global government contracting dataset that …

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Government Analytics Using Procurement Data

Cocciolo, S., Samaddar, S. and Fazekas, M. 2023. Government Analytics Using Procurement Data. in Rogger, D. and Schuster, C. (editors) 2023. The Government Analytics Handbook: Leveraging Data to Strengthen Public Administration. Washington, DC: World Bank, Chapter 12.

 

The digitalization of national public procurement systems across the world has opened enormous opportunities to measure and analyze procurement data. The use of data analytics on public procurement data allows governments to strategically monitor procurement markets and trends, to improve the procurement …

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