World Bank

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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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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Governance Risk Assessment System (GRAS): Advanced Data Analytics for Detecting Fraud, Corruption, and Collusion in Public Expenditures

Ortega Nieto, D., Fazekas, M., Vaz Mondo, B., Tóth, B., Braem Velasco, R. A. (2023). Governance Risk Assessment System (GRAS): Advanced Data Analytics for Detecting Fraud, Corruption, and Collusion in Public Expenditures (English). Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Insight. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group.

Corruption poses a significant threat to development and has a disproportionate impact on the poor and most vulnerable. Government agencies struggle to identify fraud and corruption in public expenditures. Risk assessments usually rely on manual …

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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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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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Development aid contracts database: World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and EuropeAid

Fazekas, M., Abdou, A., Kazmina, Y. and Regős, N. (2022). Development aid contracts database: World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and EuropeAid. Data in Brief, Volume 42, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2022.108121 

This article presents a global database of government contracts funded by the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and EuropeAid, principally from the years 2000-2017. The contract-level data were directly collected from the official contract publication sites of these organisations using webscraping methods. While the source publication formats are diverse both over time …

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Anti-corruption interventions in development aid: Is corruption reduced or merely displaced?

Dávid-Barrett, E., Fazekas, M. (2018): Anti-corruption interventions in development aid: Is corruption reduced or merely displaced? GTI-WP/2018:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute

Most anti-corruption interventions are small-scale and targeted. Hence, there is a risk that they simply displace corruption rather than reducing it as corrupt actors adapt to the new conditions. Direct attempts at improving corruption controls in one area might elicit two evasive tactics: corrupt actors could shift focus to areas with weaker controls or could more aggressively exploit the …

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Development aid funded contracts and projects: World Bank, IADB, and EuropeAid datasets

The project, “Curbing corruption in development aid-funded procurement” is releasing the full datasets collected on development projects, public tenders, and contracts for 3 major donor agencies: the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and EuropeAid. The project was supported by the British Academy/ UK Department for International Development Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme. The final datasets result from a concerted effort by GTI, the University of Sussex and Datlab. In addition to republishing structured data gathered from official source …

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