Public procurement in law and practice

Erica Bosio, Simeon Djankov, Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We examine a new data set of laws and practices governing public procurement, as well as procurement outcomes, in 187 countries. We measure regulation as restrictions on discretion of the procuring agents. We find that laws and practices are highly correlated with each other across countries, better practices are correlated with better outcomes, but laws themselves are not correlated with outcomes. To shed light on this puzzle, we present a model of procurement in which both regulation and public sector capacity determine the efficiency of procurement. In the model, regulation is effective in countries with low public sector capacity, and detrimental in countries with high public sector capacity because it inhibits the socially optimal exercise of discretion. We find evidence broadly consistent with this prediction: regulation of procurement improves outcomes, but only in countries with low public sector capacity.

JEL-codes: D73 H11 H57 K12 K42 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2020-05-23
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118910/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Public Procurement in Law and Practice (2022)
Working Paper: Public procurement in law and practice (2022)
Working Paper: Public Procurement in Law and Practice (2020)
Working Paper: Public Procurement in Law and Practice (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:118910

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().