"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

Research Notes

The EU funds, Viktor Orbán, and Lőrinc Mészáros, the Hungarian gas fitter: four graphs

Research Notes, Short Papers, , , , , ,

 

March 8, 2019

 

CRCB. 2019. The EU funds, Viktor Orbán and the performance of firms owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, the Hungarian gas fitter, in the Hungarian public tenders 2005-2018. Budapest: CRCB.

Based on the empirical analysis of the Hungarian public tenders we pointed out  that the EU funding has perverse effects in Hungary: it helps to reduce the intensity of competition, to increase the level of corruption risk and the weight of price distortion, and it generated the growth of the estimated direct social loss due to weak competition and high level of corruption risks from 2009 to 2016. The analysis on public tenders won by read more

An explanatory model on the reorganization of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and on the expropriation of its research institutes

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May 30, 2019

 

CRCB. 2019. An Explanatory Model on the Reorganization of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and on the Expropriation of its Research Institutes. CRCB Research Notes: 2019:6, Budapest: CRCB.

This short analysis deals with a possible interpretation scheme of the real objectives of the Hungarian government with the forced transformation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) and the destitution of the network of its research institutes in 14 points. With this read more

The intensity of competition, corruption risks, and the winner companies

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5 July 2018

Istvan Janos Toth – Miklos Hajdu: The Intensity of competition, corruption risks, and the winner companies.  Analysis of public procurement of a European capital 2011-2016. CRCB, Budapest, July 5, 2018.

The paper in Hungarian  (pdf)

Database in Stata format (dta)

Stata do file read more

Bangladesh, Zambia and Hungary. Data publication practice of the Hungarian Public Procurement Authority

Publications, Research Notes, Short Papers, , , ,

19 February 2018

THE HUNGARIAN PUBLIC PROCUREMENT AUTHORITY (HPPA) DID FILE A LAWSUIT IN 19 NOVEMBER 2018 AGAINST THE CRCB FOR HARMING HPPA’s REPUTATION IN THIS RESEARCH NOTE.

ACCORDING  TO THE INJUCTION OF THE BUDAPEST CAPITAL COURT (22.P.23.829/2018/5.)  WE HAD TO REMOVE THIS PAPER FROM OUR WEBSITE. THE STATEMENTS MADE IN THE ABSTRACT WERE THEREFORE ALSO TRUNCATED.

In this research note we briefly analyse the data publication standard used by the Hungarian Public Procurement read more

How does the Kleptocratic State Work in Hungary?

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István János Tóth – Miklós Hajdu: How does the Kleptocratic State Work in Hungary? A research note based on Hungarian public procurement data. CRCB, Budapest, January 2018.

26 January  2018

In this research note, we use the public procurement database built by CRCB, which contains data from more than 200,000 public tenders from 1997 to 2017. The analysis is based on data from 126,330 public procurement contracts from 2010 to 2016. The focus of the analysis is public tenders (without framework agreements) won by companies related to cronies and read more

Public tenders of Hungarian hospitals on the standard dissection table of the economic analysis

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24 January 2018

István János Tóth – Miklós Hajdu: Public tenders of Hungarian hospitals on the standard dissection table of the economic analysis. Analysis of intensity of competition, corruption risks and price distortion of Hungarian public procurement. Budapest: CRCB, January, 2018.

Abstract

In the following short paper, we analyse the contracts of a Hungarian EU-funded programme (KEOP – 5.6.0/E/15) involved in an ongoing investigation of the Hungarian Competition Authority (HCA). The investigation was started for suspect of collusion and among the suspects involved are both Hungarian owned firms and read more

Brief analysis on the cronyism in Hungary

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24 December 2017

Before the issuers publish their calls for tenders, they have to calculate the estimated price of the procurement. This calculation can be based on their experience from previous tenders and on the results of market research.  The price drop between the estimated value and the actual contract price can be regarded as a proxy for measure the intensity of competition. The higher competition between the bidders will result in more intense price competition what should lead to lower read more

Competitive intensity and family business

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30 May 2017

In these short papers we analyse the effect of friendship and family ties with the Hungarian Prime Minister (Viktor Orban) on the competitive intensity of public tenders won by companies owned by his close friends and family members. The analysis is based on more than 151,000 Hungarian public procurement tenders in the period of 2009-2016. Using OLS and ordered logit estimations, we estimate the effect of the friendship and family ties on the competitive intensity of tenders. The results point out read more