Hidden barriers to open competition: Using text mining to uncover corrupt restrictions to competition in public procurement

Eszter Katona & Mihály Fazekas (2024). Hidden barriers to open competition: Using text mining to uncover corrupt restrictions to competition in public procurement. GTI-WP/2024:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute

Public procurement accounts for one third of government spending across the world, while it is also particularly vulnerable to corruption. Large amounts of open administrative data enabled a rich literature on measuring corruption. However, scholarship largely focuses on structured information on government tenders, neglecting text fields which are particularly suitable for hiding …

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Compliance and strategic contract manipulation around single market regulatory thresholds – the case of Poland

Tóth, B., Fazekas, M. (2017): Compliance and strategic contract manipulation around single market regulatory thresholds – the case of Poland. GTI-WP/2017:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

The functioning of the EU’s single market in government contracts crucially hinges upon compliance with and adequate use of EU-wide rules. However, evidence from a range of countries suggest that these rules are circumvented and manipulated tenders are used to pursue protectionist or favouritistic agendas. In order to test whether such claims also apply to …

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Corruption Risks in UK Public Procurement and New Anti-Corruption Tools

Mihály Fazekas – Elizabeth Dávid-Barrett (2015): Corruption Risks in UK Public Procurement and New Anti-Corruption Tools. GTI-R/2015:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

The UK government has taken a number of important steps to ensure that public procurement is conducted to the highest standards, and to make procurement markets more competitive. The work of the Crown Commercial Service has substantially professionalised public procurement while reforms to rules around open data have made the UK government one of the most transparent in the …

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