"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

Extracting data from public procurement documents 1998-2004

Publications, Reports

Although the Hungarian Public Procurement Authority has made all the information publicly available online for the public procurement tenders between 1998 and 2004, the data format is inappropriate for statistical analysis. The information is stored in basic HTML files which does not provide any interface for sorting and searching among the data. In this technical paper we describe our data extraction process which we used to turn the HTML based information into database format by extracting read more

Anatomy of Grand Corruption: A Composite Corruption Risk Index Based on Objective Data

Presentations, Publications

 

March 20, 2014

 

Presentation at the Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 20. March 2014.

The presentation: (PDF)

 

Suggested citation:

 

Fazekas, M., & Tóth, I. J. (2014, March 20). Anatomy of Grand Corruption: A Composite Corruption Risk Index Based on Objective Data [Presentation]. Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, read more

Analysis of the procurement documents interconnectivity 2005-2012

Publications, Reports

The Hungarian Public Procurement Authority does not have such a database on Hungarian public procurements, that contains the documentation of each public procurement tender in a uniform structure: namely the call for tenders, the contract award notices, the contract fulfilment, and contract amendment notices or corrigenda.

The goal of CRBC is to solve this deficiency: we would like to build a uniformly structured database based on the publicly available documents of the Authority that is suitable read more

The Quality of Hungarian Legistlation 1990-2012. Preliminary Results

Publications, Reports

February 14, 2014

 

This short paper describes some basic characteristics of the Hungarian legislation in 1998-2012 through publicly accessible online administrative data. Our focus is to compare the 2010-2012 period to former years. We assume that these characteristics – the number of days elapsed between submitting a bill and the publication of the final law; the type of the person/organisation who submitted the bill; number of modifications that become necessary a short time after the read more

Three Indicators of Institutionalised Grand Corruption Using Administrative Data

Presentations, Publications

 

February 4, 2014

 

The Corruption Research Center Budapest team wins the U4 Proxy Challenge competition for measuring corruption.

 

On the 4th of February 2014, the CRCB team, István János Tóth and Mihály Fazekas, participated in the Proxy Challenge workshop in Bergen (Norway) organised by the U4-Anti-Corruption Resource Centre. In a competition with four other finalist teams, CRCB has won this global competition for proposing novel corruption measures, including innovative indicators of institutionalised grand corruption in public read more

Anatomy of grand corruption: a composite corruption risk index based on objective data

Presentations, Publications

 

December 13, 2013

 

Presentation at the Hungarian Society of Economics 7th Annual Conference, Budapest, Hungary, 20. December 2013.

The Presentation: (PDF)

 

Suggested citation:

 

Fazekas, M., Tóth, I. J., & King, L. P. (2013, December 20). Anatomy of grand corruption: A composite corruption risk index based on objective data [Presentation  at the Hungarian Society of Economics 7th Annual Conference, read more

Data publication for Hungarian citizens – II.

Databases, Reports

Data publication for Hungarian citizens – II. Basic data on Hungarian public procurement spending in 2009-2012 using the MaKAB database, January 23 2014 [in Hungarian: Adatközlés a magyar állampolgárok számára – II.  A magyar közbeszerzések alapadatai 2009-2012 a MaKAB alapján, 2014 január 23.].
 “…ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” [J. F. Kennedy]

PDF (in English)

PDF (in Hungarian)

Database for download, 24/01/2014 update (files are compressed with rar compression): por, sav, dta, csv, xlsx

We are continuing this project. If you would like to join us, please contact read more

In Respectable Society: On How Networks and Institutionalised Grand Corruption Interact in Hungary

Presentations, Publications

 

December 11, 2013

 

Presentation at the Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis, University of Manchester, Manchester, 11 December 2013.

The presentation: (PDF)

 

Suggested citation:

 

Fazekas, M., & Tóth, I. J. (2013). In Respectable Society: On How Networks and Institutionalised Grand Corruption Interact in Hungary [Presentation]. The Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis, University of Manchester, Manchester, read more

Hidden Depths. The Case of Hungary

Chapters and articles

Fazekas, M. – King, L. P. – Tóth, I. J.: Hidden Depths. The Case of Hungary. In: Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (ed.): Controlling Corruption in Europe. The Anticorruption Report Vol. 1., Barbara Budrich Publishers. Opladen – Berlin – Toronto. 2013. pp. 74-85.

This report investigates corruption risk of EU funds spending in Hungary within the framework of the Public Procurement Law. Its finding is that in spite of what is a tight regulatory framework EU funds are likely to fuel the abuse of public read more

CRCB-WP/2013:03

Working Papers

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. Working Paper Series: CRCB-WP/2013:03.

The paper explores the impact of EU funds on institutionalised grand corruption in public procurement between 2009-2012 in three countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. We analyse a unique pooled database containing contract-level public procurement information for all three countries. We develop a composite corruption risks indicator based on the incidence and logical structure of ‘red flags’ in read more