Author: Ágnes Czibik

Assessing the quality of government at the regional level using public procurement data

Fazekas, M. (2017):  Assessing the quality of government at the regional level using public procurement data. European Commission Working Papers WP 12/2017. Available online: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/information/publications/working-papers/2017/assessing-the-quality-of-government-at-the-regional-level-using-public-procurement-data

Public procurement, that is the purchase of goods and services by public entities, plays a crucial role in the development and quality of government across the European Union (EU). On average, it amounts to about 13 % of GDP or 29 % of government spending (European Commission, 2016; OECD, 2015). It is a genuinely cross-cutting …

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Controlling Corruption in Development Aid: New Evidence from Contract-Level Data

Dávid-Barrett, E., Fazekas, M., Hellmann, O., Márk, L., McCorley, C. (2017):  Controlling Corruption in Development Aid:  New Evidence from Contract-Level Data. GTI-WP/2017:03, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Following scandals about corruption in foreign aid, and in a political climate that increasingly questions the legitimacy of development assistance, donors are under pressure to control how their funds are spent. At the same time, they also face pressure to trust recipient governments to disburse project funds themselves, so as to build capacity in …

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Proxy indicators for the corrupt misuse of corporations

Mihály Fazekas, Bence Tóth (2016): Proxy indicators for the corrupt misuse of corporations. U4 Brief 2017:6. 

Mihály Fazekas and Bence Tóth’s corruption proxy challenge paper has been published on U4 Anticorruption Resoure Center’ website here: http://www.u4.no/publications/proxy-indicators-for-the-corrupt-misuse-of-corporations/

 

We need more imaginative ways of addressing corruption. It is important to generate indicators that development agencies can use. U4 and DFID developed a proxy challenge competition to inspire the research community to develop reliable, intuitive, accessible and cost-effective assessment methods that are …

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Big data in public procurement – Colloquium

Mihaly Fazekas & Stéphane Saussier: Chapter 3. Big data in public procurement. Colloquium. In: Law and Economics of Public Procurement Reforms (ed: Gustavo Piga and Tunde Tatrai), Ruthledge. 2018. https://www.routledge.com/Law-and-Economics-of-Public-Procurement-Reforms/Piga-Tatrai/p/book/9781138296480

Summary of the article

This chapter exposes the enormous opportunities presented by the emergence of Big Data in public procurement and the lack of investment and effort for exploiting these opportunities. Big Data in public procurement holds the promise of fundamentally transforming how procurement performance is understood and it can …

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Corruption, government turnover, and public contracting market structure – Insights using network analysis and objective corruption proxies

Fazekas, M., Skuhrovec, J., Wachs, J. (2017): Corruption, government turnover, and public contracting market structure – Insights using network analysis and objective corruption proxies. GTI-WP/2017:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Many policymakers and researchers study and debate how to control and limit corruption. Few have examined the mechanisms by which corruption distorts markets and how they may be influenced to mitigate negative effects. To develop this new perspective, we study how corruption effects the structure of public contracting markets modelled as …

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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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Uncovering High-Level Corruption: Cross-National Corruption Proxies Using Government Contracting Data

Fazekas, M and Kocsis, G (2015). Uncovering High-Level Corruption: Cross-National Corruption Proxies Using Government Contracting Data. British Journal of Poltical Science. Published online: 24 August 2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000461

Measuring high-level corruption and government favouritism has been the object of extensive scholarly and policy interest with relatively little progress in the last decade. In order to address the lack of reliable indicators, this article develops two objective proxy measures of high-level corruption in public procurement: single bidding in competitive markets and …

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Assessing Tanzania’s National Procurement Data Infrastructure

Czibik Á, Dávid-Barrett E, Fazekas M, Parsons D, Stern D, Stern R and Szendrői B (2017): Tanzania’s Procurement Data Infrastructure: Observations and Recommendations. GTI-R/2017:01, Budapest, Government Transparency Institute, May 2017

The publication of data about government procurement is widely perceived to be beneficial in terms of improving transparency over a significant area of public spending. Transparency in public procurement is associated with greater scrutiny over processes and outcomes, helping to improve accountability in order to achieve enhanced competition, better value …

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Red tape, bribery and government favouritism: evidence from Europe

Mihály Fazekas: Red tape, bribery and government favouritism: evidence from Europe. Crime, Law and Social Change (2017). URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10611-017-9694-2

Red tape has long been identified as a major cause of corruption, hence deregulation was advocated as an effective anticorruption tool, an advice which many country followed. However, we lack robust systematic evidence on whether deregulation actually lowers corruption. This is partially due to the difficulty of defining what is good regulation, but also to the lack of theoretical clarity about …

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Infrastructure for Whom? Corruption Risks in Infrastructure Provision Across Europe

Mihály Fazekas, Bence Tóth: Infrastructure for Whom? Corruption Risks in Infrastructure Provision Across Europe. In: The Governance of Infrastructure. Ed.: Wegrich K, Kostka G, Hammerschmid G. Hertie School of Governance, 9 March 2017. URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-governance-of-infrastructure-9780198787310?cc=gb&lang=en&#

Infrastructure provision from roads to sanitation involves large amounts of public funds in highly complex projects comprehensible only to a few. Hence, it is hardly a surprise that all across Europe, but especially in high corruption risk countries, it is a primary target of corrupt …

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