Adam, Isabelle; Blum, Jürgen Rene; & Fazekas, Mihály. (2025) Improving Public Procurement Outcomes: A Review of Tools and the State of the Evidence Base. GTI-WP/2025:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.
Considering that about 15% of global GDP flows through public procurement systems, there is a strong need for evidence on what works in this field. This paper systematically reviews the state of the evidence in academic and policy literature on public procurement reforms and their impact on value for money and open access to public tenders. The quality of evidence on the impact of public procurement interventions is moderate, with reliable evidence established in multiple countries using diverse analytical methods only for selective, typically narrow tools, such as preferential treatment of bidders or centralized procurement. Although there is a range of tools with global policy interest and extensive implementation record such as transparency portals, civil society supervision, or audits, these have received little evaluation. Comparing intervention types according to their effects on savings (the most comparable and widely used outcome), centralized procurement and framework agreements stand out with the largest effects, over 50%. Most other intervention types were documented to achieve ~5-10% price savings which are sizable given the large sums spent on public procurement. This systematic review calls for more research on e-procurement tools, transparency portals, civil society supervision, and public management reforms.
Read the full paper HERE
An earlier version of the paper was published in 2021 by the World Bank, see here.