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Corruption in the Times of Pandemia

Jorge Gallego, Mounu Prem and Juan Vargas

No js8by, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: The public health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed governments to substantially and swiftly increase spending. Consequently, public procurement rules have been relaxed in many places to expedite transactions. However, this may also create opportunities for inefficiency and corruption. Using contract-level information on public spending from Colombia’s e-procurement platform, and a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we find that municipalities classified by a machine learning algorithm as more prone to corruption react to the spending surge by using a larger proportion of discretionary non-competitive contracts and increasing their average value, especially to procure crisis-related items. Additionally, in places that rank higher on our corruption scale, contracts signed during the emergency are more likely to have cost overruns, be awarded to campaign donors, and exhibit implementation inefficiencies. Our evidence suggests that these negative shocks may increase waste and corruption, and thus governments should bolster instances of monitoring and oversight.

Date: 2020-12-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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https://osf.io/download/5fe9f499e3acd102544a7906/

Related works:
Working Paper: Corruption in the times of pandemia (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Corruption in the times of Pandemia (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Corruption in the Times of Pandemia (2020) Downloads
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:js8by

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/js8by

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