Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/172826 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
DIW Discussion Papers No. 1704
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
We exploit a new dataset based on EU procurement award notices to investigate the relationship between the degree of centralization of public procurement and its performance. We focus on the case of Italy, where all levels of government, along with a number of other public institutions, are involved in procurement and are subject to the same EU regulation. We find that i) municipalities and utilities, which currently award the largest shares of contracts, perform worse than all other institutional categories; and ii) decentralization implies lower performance only when it comes with weak competences of procurement officials. The evidence seems to suggests that a re-organization of the procurement system, both in terms of partial centralization and better professionalization of procurement officials, would help improve overall procurement performance.
Subjects: 
Public Procurement
Decentralization
Procurement performance
Public works
JEL: 
H11
H57
H71
H77
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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