"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

Data publication for workshop at Big Data for Policy conference

Databases, Presentations, Publications, , ,

 
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

Presentations, Publications

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

Presentations, Publications

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?

Presentations, Publications, Reports

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

Finding the hay stack and the needle. Using Big Data to evaluate public procurement performance

Presentations, Publications

Mihály Fazekas presented at the International Corruption Hunters Alliance meeting organised by the World Bank in Washington DC. This conference brought together heads and senior officials of corruption investigating bodies and prosecuting authorities, anti-corruption experts, academics, and representatives of international organizations from over 130 countries. His presentation was part of the panel on how to use data mining and ‘Big Data’ to better detect, investigate, and prevent corruption in financial flows, development aid, and government contracts. read more

Analytical framework to capture corruption and collusion risks in public procurement

Presentations, Publications

Mihály Fazekas briefed European Commission and Member State public procurement officials about the CRCB risk assessment methodology and future perspectives for collaboration within CRCB’s new large-scale research program, called DIGIWHIST. His presentation was part of the meeting of the Economic and Statistical Working Group (Advisory Committee on Public Procurement) 12th of November 2014, read more

EU Funds’ curse? The impact of EU Funds on institutionalised grand corruption in CEE

Presentations, Publications

Mihály Fazekas presented CRCB’s research at the launch event of the second ANTICORRP volume: The Anticorruption Frontline at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

The presentation focused on the main findings of the chapter co-authored by CRCB researchers István Jánost Tóth and Mihály Fazekas. In addition, it also presented new research perspectives including the authors work using EU-wide public procurement data as well as the exciting new research grant they recently won, called DIGIWHIST: “The Digital Whistleblower. Fiscal read more

Corruption risks of the nuclear power plant development in Paks

Presentations, Publications,

On 28th October 2014 Istvan Janos Toth presented CRCB’s research results on the corruption risks of the investment of Paks nuclear power plant. The study was prepared for the Energiaklub Institute.

The study examines corruption risks based on economic theory and the specific characteristics of large investment projects. We provide an estimation of the amount of corruption risks in the proposed investment and we put forward suggestions for an anti-corruption strategy. One of the key arguments discussed in the study is read more

Second-generation indicators of high-level corruption using public procurement data

Presentations, Publications

 

Brown Bag presentation given at the World Bank, Washington D.C., 4th of June 2014

 

ABSTRACT

As part of the one week visit of CRCB to the World Bank (Operations Risk, Public Sector Governance and Integrity and Controllers), Mihály Fazekas and István János Tóth gave brown bag lunch presentation. It introduced the CRCB approach to measuring corruption and collusion risks in public procurement across the globe. After demonstrating the feasibility and validity of new ‘objecitve’ read more

New Indicators of High-Level Corruption using Government Contracting Data: Examples from Eastern Europe

Presentations, Publications

 

Presentation given at the Oxford Centre for the Study of Corruption and Transparency , University of Oxford, Kellogg College, 20th of June 2014.

 

ABSTRACT

Existing measures of corruption often suffer from bias and are too broad to guide policy or test theories. This paper proposes three new indirect indicators of high-level corruption in public procurement, using contract and organisation-level administrative data.

The first is a composite score expressing the probability of corruption occurring in public procurement tenders read more