CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Tarasova, Sofiia |
|---|---|
| Title | Collusive Risk in Hungarian Public Procurement: Entry Patterns and Geographic Frictions |
| Summary | Collusion in public procurement auctions poses a threat to competition, leading to higher costs, reduced efficiency and misallocation of public resources. Using the universe of electronic notices, this thesis examines two symptoms of weak competition in Hungarian public procurement: price premium relative to the requestor’s own estimate and preferential award to local firms. Bid inflation is modelled with OLS on winning offers in fully open procedures, exploiting product- and year-fixed effects while proxying competition by a within-auction Herfindahl index and a lot-splitting indicator. Allocation is analysed with a tender-fixed-effect linear-probability model that compares local and non-local bidders within the same auction and tests whether openness curbs any home-district edge. Results show that doubling concentration raises bid inflation by about one percentage point and that awarding a lot to several co-winners adds a further quarter-point premium. Local bidders enjoy a ten-percentage-point higher win probability; this advantage is not significantly smaller in open tenders. The evidence points to persistent entry deficiencies rather than transparent price cartels, suggesting that Hungarian oversight should prioritise bidder turnout and geographic diversity. |
| Supervisor | Sergey Lychagin |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/tarasova_sofia.pdf |
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