public procurement

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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Integrity Dividends: Procurement in the Water and Sanitation Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean

Adam, I.,  Fazekas, M., Hernandez Sanchez, A., Horn, P. and Regös, N. (2023). Integrity Dividends: Procurement in the Water and Sanitation Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean. Technical Note No 2608. Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC. http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0004688

Public procurement represents a large portion of government expenditure, more so in developing economies. Inefficiencies in public expenditures thus place a heavy burden on society. The Water and Sanitation (W&S) sector is especially vulnerable to public procurement inefficiencies due to the capital-intensive …

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Bulgaria Country Economic Memorandum : A Path to High Income

Desislava Nikolova, Mihaly Fazekas, Bence Tóth, Viktoriia Poltoratskaia, Marc Schiffbauer, et al. (2023) Bulgaria; Country Economic Memorandum : A Path to High Income (English). Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group.

Bulgaria has followed sound macroeconomic policy in recent years and has weathered the Covid-19 economic crisis relatively well. The country embarked on a thorough transformation to a functioning market economy in the run-up to European Union (EU) membership in 2007 which, since 2018, has been followed by a firm course …

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Poland Public Finance Review – Public Procurement: Saving and Greening

Fazekas, Mihaly; Ziolkowska, Barbara; and Regos, Nóra (2022) Public Procurement: Saving and Greening. In World Bank (2022) Poland Public Finance Review, World Bank, Washington DC. Chapter 4.

Poland’s public finance management was prudent in the years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitated a swift, substantial, and frontloaded policy response to the crisis. Poland built fiscal buffers in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic through spending containment and improved tax collections, aided by robust growth. This created the fiscal space …

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