"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

Publications

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

CRCB-WP/2014:01

Publications, Working Papers

Fazekas, M – Tóth, I J: From corruption to state capture:  A new analytical framework with empirical applications from Hungary. Working Paper Series: CRCB-WP/2014:01.
State capture and corruption are widespread phenomena across the globe, but their empirical study is still highly challenging. This paper develops a new conceptual and analytical framework for gauging state capture based on micro-level contractual networks in public procurement. To this end, it first establishes a robust measure of corruption risks in public procurement transactions focusing on relationships between pairs of issuers and suppliers. Second, it searches for 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

New ways to measure institutionalised grand corruption in public procurement

Publications, Reports

Fazekas M. – Tóth I. J.. (2014), New ways to measure institutionalised grand corruption in public procurement. U4 Policy Brief, October 2014 No 9, CMI-U4.

Public procurement, one of the largest areas of public spending worldwide, gives public officials wide discretion. It is therefore unsurprising that it is also one of the government functions most often vulnerable to corruption. While there have been many qualitative accounts of high-level corruption in public contracting, it is only recently that 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

Are EU Funds a Corruption Risk?

Chapters and articles, Publications

Fazekas, M. – Chvalkovska, J. – Skuhrovec, J. – Tóth, I. J. – King, L. P.: Are EU Funds a Corruption Risk? The Impact of EU Funds on Grand Corruption in Central and Eastern Europe. In Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (ed.): The Anticorruption Frontline. The ANTICORRP Project Vol. 2., Barbara Budrich Publishers. Opladen – Berlin – Toronto. 2014. pp. 68-89.

There is an intensifying public debate about EU Structural and Cohesion Fund’s impact on government quality in recipient countries. We test 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

Do Hungarian municipalities abide by the law? Analysis of urban municipalities’ webpages

Publications, Reports

The report empirically analyses information disclosure practices on 368 municipalities’ webpages in 2013 from the viewpoint of transparency, accountability, and informing citizens. The analysis is based on the laws regulating information disclosure in Hungary. The report measures the degree to which municipalities’ webpages abide by the prescriptions of these laws. The empirical results show that it is the lack of transparency and neglecting legal prescriptions which characterises urban settlements; 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