corruption

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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Second specialised regional training for R2G4P members: Innovative tools and methodologies for tracking illicit financial flows, state capture and corruption

In order to increase the capacity of its civil society and government partners to monitor, diagnose and tackle corruption risks, the R2G4P initiative is holding its second internal three-day regional training on 18-20 May 2022 in Budapest hosted by the GTI at CEU.

While the first training was structured around the initiative’s key methodologies, the current one explores new topics and areas, such as:

  • The conceptual framework of illicit finance and offshore wealth;
  • The role of the Financial Intelligence Units
…

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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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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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The extra-legal governance of corruption: Tracing the organization of corruption in public procurement

Fazekas, M., Sberna, S., & Vannucci, A. (2021). The extra-legalgovernance of corruption: Tracing the organization of corruption in public procurement. Governance, available online: https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12648

This article traces the organization of corruption in public procurement, by theoretically and empirically assessing the contribution of extra-legal governance organizations (EGO) to supporting it. Theoretically, we explore the governance role played by organized criminal groups in corruption networks, facilitating corrupt transactions by lowering search costs, bargaining costs, and enforcement cots. Empirically, the analysis exploits a …

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COVID-19 emergency public procurement in Romania: Corruption risks and market behavior

Abdou, A., Czibik, Á., Tóth, B. and Fazekas, M. (2021): COVID-19 emergency public procurement in Romania: Corruption risks and market behavior. GTI-WP/2021:03, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

The aim of this research is to track corruption risks affecting the Romanian public procurement system during the COVID-19 emergency. We develop a composite Corruption Risk Index (CRI) to track public procurement contracting risks in Romania in the period from 2015 to 2021. We find that the emergency context exposed the procurement process to …

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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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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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Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks: Investigating the Impact of Bureaucratic Meritocracy on Public Procurement Processes

Nicholas Charron, Carl Dahlström, Viktor Lapuente, Mihály Fazekas (2017). Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks: Investigating the Impact of Bureaucratic Meritocracy on Public Procurement Processes. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 79, No. 1, January 2017. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.95.issue-1

This article emphasizes the important interplay between politics and bureaucracy. It suggests that corruption risks are lower when bureaucrats’ careers do not depend on political connections but on their peers. We test this hypothesis with a novel measure of career incentives in the public …

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