Assessing Vulnerabilities to Corruption in Public Procurement and Their Price Impact

Abdou, A., Basdevant, O., Dávid-Barrett, E. and Fazekas, M. (2022). Assessing Vulnerabilities to Corruption in Public Procurement and Their Price Impact. IMF WP/2022/094.

Public procurement can be highly vulnerable to corruption. This paper outlines a methodology and results in assessing corruption risks in public procurement and their impact on relative prices, using large databases on government contracts and tenders. Our primary contribution is to analyze how price differential in public procurement contracts can be explained by corruption risk factor (aggregated …

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Data update of World Bank, IADB, and EuropeAid datasets on development aid funded contracts and projects

The DFID-funded project “Curbing Corruption in Government Contracting” is releasing an update on the datasets collected on development projects, public tenders, and contracts for three major donor agencies: the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and EuropeAid. The datasets not only republish structured data gathered from official source websites, but also contain corruption risk red flags developed by the research team.

About the project

The project entitled “Curbing Corruption in Government Contracting” analyses how procurement can be manipulated for …

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Designing political integrity risk indicators: a how-to guide in 11 steps

Poltoratskaya, V., Fazekas, M. and Tóth, B. (2021). Designing political integrity risk indicators: a how-to guide in 11 steps. Transparency International.

The need for the development of specific indicators of corruption – direct or indirect – has grown over the last decade. This can be attributed in part to the increasing recognition of the significant role corruption plays in adverse governance outcomes, such as poor health and environmental degradation. The demand for indicators has also emerged out of frustration with …

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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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Tender-X Risk Consultancy: Data-Driven Risk Analytics

Tender-X is a for-profit venture developed by the Government Transparency Institute, aimed at commercial use. The target clients of Tender-X are banks and development finance institutions that finance companies engaged in public procurement, as well as private companies that take part in public procurement and their legal and financial advisors.

Tender-X aims to save time for its clients by providing an analytical report based on quantitative data. Such data is not part of the usual qualitative and watchlist-based due diligence …

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Public procurement cartels: A systematic testing of old and new screens

Adam, I., Fazekas, M., Kazmina, Y., Teremy, Zs., Tóth, B., Villamil, I., R. and Wachs, J. (2022). Public procurement cartels: A systematic testing of old and new screens. GTI-WP/2022:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Though cartels are thought to be common, they tend to be hard to find. Successful prosecutions are even more rare, and usually begin with an exceptional event: when a cartel member makes a sloppy mistake or decides to blow the whistle. Researchers have long studied these cases …

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Analyzing Public Procurement Risks: Training manual

Fazekas, M., Horn, P., Czibik, Á., and Tóth, B. (2021): Analyzing Public Procurement Risks: Training manual. Budapest: R2G4P / Government Transparency Institute. 

The main purpose of the manual is to introduce how data analytics can encourage good governance practices by highlighting the weaknesses of public procurement systems and by supporting independent corruption risk research. To achieve this, the document gives a step-by-step introduction to the analytical process of large-scale public procurement datasets. First, it briefly introduces the conceptual background of …

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Countering Public Grant Fraud in Spain: Machine Learning for Assessing Risks and Targeting Control Activities

OECD (2021), Countering Public Grant Fraud in Spain: Machine Learning for Assessing Risks and Targeting Control Activities, OECD Public Governance Reviews, Paris: OECD Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1787/0ea22484-en.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, marked by a high volume of accelerated spending, fraud risks have become a pressing concern for governments worldwide. In this environment, public control and audit bodies play a vital role to ensure money is well spent and vulnerabilities are spotted and addressed quickly. In Spain, the General Comptroller …

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Public procurement under and after emergencies

Fazekas, M., Nishchal, S. and Søreide, T. (2021): Public procurement under and after emergencies. In Bandiera, O., Bosio, E. and Spagnolo, G. (Ed.), Procurement in Focus – Rules, Discretion, and Emergencies. London: CEPR Press. pp.33-42. 

Covid-19 has served as a global case study for increased discretion in public procurement, with governments worldwide making rules more flexible to increase spending, reduce the damage, and save lives. This CEPR eBook provides fascinating insights into the tension between rules and discretion in public …

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Can impact assessments tame legislative drift? Event history analysis of modifications of laws across Europe

Brenner, D., & Fazekas, M. (2021). Can impact assessmentstame legislative drift? Event history analysis of modifications of laws across Europe.Governance, available online: https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12649

Laws should endure and change only if assumed benefits don’t materialize over time. Yet frequent modifications of laws shortly after their enactment distort this compromise between stability and change. While, Impact Assessments (IAs) are designed to improve the quality of legislation, we know little about IAs’ impact on legal stability post-enactment. We fill this gap by analysing …

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