The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement

Cost inefficiencies in public procurement tend to come from two sources: corruption (moral hazard) and incompetence (adverse selection). In most countries, audit authorities are responsible for monitoring costs but do not distinguish both sources of inefficiency in their audits. Judicial courts typi...

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Main Authors: Estache, Antonio, Foucart, Renaud
Format: Article
Published: Elsevier 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49573/
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author Estache, Antonio
Foucart, Renaud
author_facet Estache, Antonio
Foucart, Renaud
author_sort Estache, Antonio
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Cost inefficiencies in public procurement tend to come from two sources: corruption (moral hazard) and incompetence (adverse selection). In most countries, audit authorities are responsible for monitoring costs but do not distinguish both sources of inefficiency in their audits. Judicial courts typically rely on these cost audits, but only sanction corruption. In a model of public procurement by politicians, we study how the respective quality of the two courts affects corruption as well as cost efficiency. We find that while better courts have the direct effect of decreasing corruption, they may have a negative indirect effect on the abilities of the pool of politicians, so that the net effect on cost efficiency is ambiguous.
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spelling nottingham-495732020-05-04T19:28:59Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49573/ The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement Estache, Antonio Foucart, Renaud Cost inefficiencies in public procurement tend to come from two sources: corruption (moral hazard) and incompetence (adverse selection). In most countries, audit authorities are responsible for monitoring costs but do not distinguish both sources of inefficiency in their audits. Judicial courts typically rely on these cost audits, but only sanction corruption. In a model of public procurement by politicians, we study how the respective quality of the two courts affects corruption as well as cost efficiency. We find that while better courts have the direct effect of decreasing corruption, they may have a negative indirect effect on the abilities of the pool of politicians, so that the net effect on cost efficiency is ambiguous. Elsevier 2018-01-31 Article PeerReviewed Estache, Antonio and Foucart, Renaud (2018) The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement. Journal of Public Economics, 157 . pp. 95-106. ISSN 0047-2727 Moral hazard; Adverse selection; Procurement https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.11.008 doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.11.008 doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.11.008
spellingShingle Moral hazard; Adverse selection; Procurement
Estache, Antonio
Foucart, Renaud
The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement
title The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement
title_full The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement
title_fullStr The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement
title_full_unstemmed The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement
title_short The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement
title_sort scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement
topic Moral hazard; Adverse selection; Procurement
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49573/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49573/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49573/