public procurement

Measuring the Risk of Corruption and Its Price Impact in North Macedonia 2011–2022

Fazekas, Mihály; Abdou, Aly; Ibrahimi, Klea; Tóth, Bence; & Veljanov, Zdravko (2024) Measuring the Risk of Corruption and Its Price Impact in North Macedonia 2011–2022. Policy Research working paper: WPS11007, Washington, D.C.: World Bank.
Public procurement in North Macedonia amounted to 16 percent of total government expenditure in 2018, or 5 percent of gross domestic product. The country’s public procurement is also vulnerable to corruption risks, which typically push prices up, leading to overspending. To support better budget policies, this
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North Macedonia: Public Finance Review. Ensuring Stability and Boosting Resilience.

Fazekas, M.; Regös, N.; Tóth, B.; Ibrahimi, K.; and Zdravko Veljanov (2024) Improving the Efficiency of Public Procurement. In World Bank (2024) North Macedonia: Public Finance Review. Ensuring Stability and Boosting Resilience. Chapter 6.A. World Bank, Washington, DC.

This report proposes designing such a strategy in light of macroeconomic risks. It analyzes North Macedonia’s major macroeconomic and fiscal weaknesses, risks, and debt sustainability. It discusses tax policy and compliance challenges. Regarding government effectiveness, thereport highlights the need to enhance public …

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Green Is Less Greedy : Competition, Corruption, and Productivity in Green Public Procurement in Bulgaria

Poltoratskaia,Viktoriia; Fazekas,Mihaly; Quintero,Maria Fernanda; & Schiffbauer, Marc Tobias. (2024) Green Is Less Greedy : Competition, Corruption, and Productivity in Green Public Procurement in Bulgaria. Policy Research Working Paper: WPS10987, Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.

Although green public procurement has been established as a desirable policy goal across the globe, especially in the European Union, its scope and impacts remain severely understudied. This paper provides insights into the prevalence and structure of green public procurement in Bulgaria, which is a sustainability …

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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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Using beneficial ownership data for large-scale risk assessment in public procurement. The example of 6 European countries

Arista, Irene Tello; Fazekas, Mihály & Volkotrub, Antonina (2024), Using beneficial ownership data for large-scale risk assessment in public procurement. The example of 6 European countries. GTI-WP/2024:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute

This paper fills a critical gap in the literature, providing practical insights into employing beneficial ownership data for large-scale corruption risk assessment in public procurement, with potential implications for public policy and practice. Existing literature lacks systematic evidence on using beneficial ownership (BO) data for large-scale corruption risk assessment. …

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

Katona, Eszter & Fazekas, Mihály (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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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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Bulgaria Public Finance Review 2023

Desislava Nikolova,  Collette Mari Wheeler,  Brian Erard, Monica Robayo,  Maynor Cabrera, Evan Harold Blecher, Mihaly Fazekas, Bence Tóth, Zdravko Veljanov, Viktoriia Poltoratskaia, et al. (2023) World Bank. 2023. Bulgaria Public Finance Review 2023. Washington, DC: World Bank

Bulgaria has traditionally adhered to fiscal discipline and prudent fiscal policy since the introduction of its currency board arrangement in mid-1997. After a gradual decline in the 2000s, public debt has remained among the lowest in the European Union (EU), hovering in a …

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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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Overview of corruption and anti-corruption in infrastructure development

Adam, I. and Fazekas, M. (2023). Overview of corruption and anti-corruption in infrastructure development. U4 Helpdesk Answer, Transparency International. 

Roughly one-half of all fixed capital investment by governments is in the construction of public infrastructure – an essential component of economic growth and social development, especially in developing countries (Pyman 2021). Yet at the same time governments, citizens and funders are frequently dissatisfied with the outcomes of infrastructure projects as they often involve the waste or misallocation of precious state …

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