Political Connections and Public Procurement: Evidence from the Czech Republic
| Thesis title in Czech: | Politické konexe a veřejné zakázky: výsledky pro Českou republiku |
|---|---|
| Thesis title in English: | Political Connections and Public Procurement: Evidence from the Czech Republic |
| Key words: | politické konexe, politické vazby, veřejné zakázky, korupce, politika, dary politickým stranám |
| English key words: | political connections, public procurement, corruption, politics, goverment contracts, political donations |
| Academic year of topic announcement: | 2012/2013 |
| Thesis type: | Bachelor's thesis |
| Thesis language: | angličtina |
| Department: | Institute of Economic Studies (23-IES) |
| Supervisor: | prof. Petr Janský, Ph.D. |
| Author: | hidden - assigned by the advisor |
| Date of registration: | 30.05.2013 |
| Date of assignment: | 30.05.2013 |
| Date and time of defence: | 17.06.2014 00:00 |
| Venue of defence: | ies |
| Date of electronic submission: | 16.05.2014 |
| Date of proceeded defence: | 17.06.2014 |
| Opponents: | PhDr. Jan Soudek |
| URKUND check: | |
| Guidelines |
| This thesis analyzes whether political connections of Czech firms affect their probability of success in government contract auctions. If the level of political connectedness does influence the amount and value of the government contracts received, then firms with connections to the political parties in power receive more contracts relative to firms connected with political parties that are not in control and to firms which are not politically connected at all. |
| References |
| Centrum aplikované ekonomie & Nasipolitici.cz, 2012. Connections - a study of clashes of interests in publicprocurement. Available at: http://zindex.cz/data/konexe-studie-o-stretu-zajmu.pdf
Coviello, D. & Gagliarducci, S., 2008. Political Turnover and. Available at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.172.4994 Dombrovsky, V., 2011. Do Political Connections Matter? Firm-level Evidence from Latvia. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1168702 Faccio, M., 2002. Politically Connected Firms: Can They Squeeze the State?. Available at: http://content.csbs.utah.edu/ ehrbar/erc2002/pdf/i020.pdf Fisman, R., 2001. Estimating the Value of Political Connections. Available at: http://www.columbia.edu/ jfs2106/teaching/causality/readings/suharto.pdf Goldman, E., Rocholl, J. & So, J., 2010. Political Connections and the Allocation of Procurement Contracts. Available at: http://www.idei.fr/doc/conf/icied/papers_2011/goldman.pdf |
| Preliminary scope of work |
| Outline
1.Introduction 2.Literature Review 3.Background of the study 4.Data 5.Results for the Czech Republic 6.Conclusions |
| Preliminary scope of work in English |
| In this thesis, I will analyze whether political connections created by corporate donations to political parties affect the connected firms' probability of winning a public procurement auction. If the level of political connectedness does influence the amount and value of the government contracts received, then firms with connections to the political parties in power receive more contracts compared to firms connected to political parties that are not in power and to firms which are not politically connected at all. I will focus on public procurement administered at the regional level, because there was a big shift in the leading political powers at this level following the 2008 elections. This, together with the availability of high quality data for this time period, gives a great opportunity to study the effects of political connectedness.
In the first part of the thesis, I will sum up the previous approaches to estimating the value of political connections by Faccio M. (2002), Fisman R. (2001) and others. I will also introduce other related literature. There have been extensive studies on the topic carried out on American S&P 500 firms by Goldman E., et al. (2010) or on Italian companies by Coviello, C. & Gagliarducci, S. (2008). In the next part, I will describe the background of public procurement and the political reality of the Czech republic. Then, I will study the basic patterns of behavior of regional governments as contracting authorities, focusing on areas that might uncover the potential of rent-seeking. Finally, I will present and discuss the results of my estimation of the relationship between political donations and regional public procurement outcomes. Outline 1.Introduction 2.Literature Review 3.Background of the study 4.Data 5.Results for the Czech Republic 6.Conclusions |