"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."
Lord Kelvin

Presentations

CMS & CRCB joint Press Conference in Zagreb

10 October 2017

The team of CRCB presented on October 10th 2017 in Zagreb the results of study “Intensity of Competition, Corruption Risk and Estimation of Direct Social Loss in Public Procurement of Zagreb” financed by the Centre for Peace Studies (Centar za Mirovne Studije).

The press release in Croatian

Presentation of the press conference (pdf)

Detailed presentation of the results & methods (pdf)

The paper in English (pdf)

Presentation on the DCPP software (pdf) and on the spss syntax file which allows the read more

Consultacy with the Commission of Budgetary Control of European Parliament

18 September  2017

The head of CRCB participated as an expert in the consultation with the Commission of Budgetary Control of European Parliament on Monday September 18th in Budapest and presented the CRCB’s research results on corruption risks, intensity of competition and the phenomenon of political favouritism in Hungarian public procurement.

The presentation (pdf)

The handout (pdf)

Data publication. The list of public tenders won by Orban’s close friends and family members with indicators read more

Analysing Corruptionas Black Holes – Intensity of Competiton, CorruptionRisks & Price Distortion

3 July 2017

The head of CRCB attended the LEAR Public Procurement Conference – 2017 as guest speaker. The presentation dealt with the analytical framework used by CRCB to analyse corruption risks, intensity of competition and price distortion and demonstrated some results on these topics concerning the Italian public procurement.

The presentation ( pdf read more

Analysing corruption as black holes – a study on Hungarian public procurement

22 June 2017

Presentation for a meeting in the building of EU Commission, Brussels. The presentation deals with three issues. (1) It presents the analytical framework of corruption risks and competititon intensity of public tenders used by CRCB;  (2) it deals with the results of report “Intensity of Competition, Corruption Risks and Price Distortion in the Hungarian Public Procurement – 2009-2016″ made by CRCB for the European Commission; (3) and it demonstrates some preliminary results on read more

Competitive Intensity, Overpricing, Corruption Risks and Crony Capitalism in Hungary 2009-2015

16 September 2016

Istvan Janos Toth presented the CRCB’s new research results in William Gates Building of Computer Laboratory at the conference  ”Frontiers of Data Science for Government: Ideas, Practices, and Projections. Data for Policy -2016” organised by University of Cambridge.

The presentation dealt with corruption risk detection, measuring of competitive intensity and the new way to analyse overpricing suggested by the CRCB’s researchers. Based on statistical analysis of 127,000 Hungarian public read more

Integrity Pacts – Preventing Fraud in Public Procurement Through Civil Society Oversight Mechanisms

 
Agnes Czibik presented CRCB’s research results at Transparency International Croatia’s conference ‘Integritiy Pacts – Preventing Fraud in Public Procurement Through Civil Society Oversight Mechanisms‘ in Zagreb on 10th June 2015.
The presentation gave an overview on the measurable corruption risk differences of EU-funded and nationally funded public procurement procedures and it showed some network characteristics of Hungarian organisations with high corruption read more

Data publication for workshop at Big Data for Policy conference

 
A dataset and codes for analysis are released to support the workshop held by Mihály Fazekas at the conference: “Policy-making in the Big Data Era: Opportunities and Challenges” at the University of Cambridge on the 17th of June 2015. The data and codes are solely for demonstrating some interesting ways structured public procurement data can be used to measure favouritism in government contracting.
Presentation slides
UK government supplier data (2009-2013): Public procurement supplier level dataset, halfyearly aggregation, contracts awarded by UK central read more

ANTICORRP Conference on public procurement and corruption risks

The Corvinus University of Budapest (CUB) organized a conference about the ANTICORRP research program, the Hungarian government’s anti-corruption policy and the new public procurement law on 12th May 2015. After István János Tóth’s (CRCB) opening and presentation about the ANTICORRP program’s objectives and results, dr. László Kovács (Prime Minister’s Office) presented the most important changes in the new Hungarian public procurement law. Mihály Fazekas (CUB, CRCB) highlighted some recent results of measuring corruption risks of public procurement in the read more

EU funds and corruption risks in Hungary

In the past few weeks, the European Commission found serious problems in the allocation of EU funded public procurement contracts in Hungary and the suspicion of cartel was also raised. According to the researches of CRCB, the corruption risks for EU funded contracts are slightly higher than national ones on the European level, but in Hungary the risks are significantly higher. These additional corruption risks are in connection with the low quality of the institutional environment in the country. read more

Corruption risks of the nuclear power plant investments: What can we expect in the case of Paks II?

In January 2014 the Hungarian Government announced that it reached an agreement with the government of Russia concerning the construction of two new reactors to replace current capacity at the Paks nuclear power plant. Paks I. is a Soviet-built plant operational since 1983-1987. It is the only nuclear power plant in the country and provides about 40% of Hungarian electricity consumption. With an estimated budget of 3-4 trillion Hungarian forint (9-13 billion euros), the project will be the single largest investment in read more