Uncovering High-Level Corruption: Cross-National Objective Corruption Risk Indicators Using Public Procurement Data

Mihály Fazekas, Gábor Kocsis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Measuring high-level corruption is subject to extensive scholarly and policy interest, which has achieved moderate progress in the last decade. This article develops two objective proxy measures of high-level corruption in public procurement: single bidding in competitive markets and a composite score of tendering 'red flags'. Using official government data on 2.8 million contracts in twenty-eight European countries in 2009-14, we directly operationalize a common definition of corruption: unjustified restriction of access to public contracts to favour a selected bidder. Corruption indicators are calculated at the contract level, but produce aggregate indices consistent with well-established country-level indicators, and are also validated by micro-level tests. Data are published at http://digiwhist.eu/resources/data/.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)155-164
Number of pages10
JournalBritish Journal of Political Science
Volume50
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • CRI
  • European Union
  • corruption
  • measurement
  • public procurement

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