Corruption in Public Procurement: Exploring Possible Risk-indicators at the Company Level

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Abstract

Public procurement is a sector where corruption may occur under different forms. Previous research has mostly focused on specific characteristics of the contract (e.g. price, timing, level of competition) aiming at assessing the risk through qualitative or quantitative indicators or red flags. Limited research exists on possible risk indicators at the company level.
This paper explores possible company-level indicators of risk of corruption in public procurement. The analysis relies on original datasets from five European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia and Sweden) comprising several hundred thousand public procurement contracts. It tests a number of possible company-level red flags drawn from the literature against contract-level corruption risks.
This study is part of Project DIGIWHIST (http://digiwhist.eu/), a research project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program.

Authors

• Riccardo Milani, Università Cattolica - Transcrime

• Francesco Calderoni, Università Cattolica - Transcrime

• Carlotta Carbone, Università Cattolica - Transcrime

• Mihaly Fazekas, University of Cambridge

• Martina Rotondi, Università Cattolica - Transcrime

• Elisa Superchi, Università Cattolica - Transcrime

• Bence Tóth, University of Cambridge