"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

Publications

Analysis of the procurement documents interconnectivity 2005-2012

Publications, Reports

The Hungarian Public Procurement Authority does not have such a database on Hungarian public procurements, that contains the documentation of each public procurement tender in a uniform structure: namely the call for tenders, the contract award notices, the contract fulfilment, and contract amendment notices or corrigenda.

The goal of CRBC is to solve this deficiency: we would like to build a uniformly structured database based on the publicly available documents of the Authority that is suitable read more

The Quality of Hungarian Legistlation 1990-2012. Preliminary Results

Publications, Reports

This short paper describes some basic characteristics of the Hungarian legislation in 1998-2012 through publicly accessible online administrative data. Our focus is to compare the 2010-2012 period to former years. We assume that these characteristics – the number of days elapsed between submitting a bill and the publication of the final law; the type of the person/organisation who submitted the bill; number of modifications that become necessary a short time after the publication of the law – can read more

Three indicators of institutionalised grand corruption using administrative data

Presentations, Publications

Corruption Research Center Budapest team wins the U4 Proxy Challenge competition for measuring corruption

On the 4th of February 2014, the CRCB team, István János Tóth and Mihály Fazekas, participated at the Proxy Challenge workshop in Bergen (Norway) organised by the U4-Anti-Corruption Resource Centre. In a competition with 4 other finalist teams, CRCB has won this global competition for proposing novel corruption measures with its innovative indicators of institutionalised grand corruption in public procurement. The evaluation panel included, among others, Phil Mason from DFID and Jesper Johnson from U4. We are thankful for the support and help we received read more

Data publication for Hungarian citizens – II.

Databases, Reports

Data publication for Hungarian citizens – II. Basic data on Hungarian public procurement spending in 2009-2012 using the MaKAB database, January 23 2014 [in Hungarian: Adatközlés a magyar állampolgárok számára – II.  A magyar közbeszerzések alapadatai 2009-2012 a MaKAB alapján, 2014 január 23.].
 “…ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” [J. F. Kennedy]

PDF (in English)

PDF (in Hungarian)

Database for download, 24/01/2014 update (files are compressed with rar compression): por, sav, dta, csv, xlsx

We are continuing this project. If you would like to join us, please contact read more

Hidden Depths. The Case of Hungary

Chapters and articles

Fazekas, M. – King, L. P. – Tóth, I. J.: Hidden Depths. The Case of Hungary. In: Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (ed.): Controlling Corruption in Europe. The Anticorruption Report Vol. 1., Barbara Budrich Publishers. Opladen – Berlin – Toronto. 2013. pp. 74-85.

This report investigates corruption risk of EU funds spending in Hungary within the framework of the Public Procurement Law. Its finding is that in spite of what is a tight regulatory framework EU funds are likely to fuel the abuse of public read more

CRCB-WP/2013:03

Working Papers

Fazekas, M. – Chvalkovska, J. – Skuhrovec, J. –  Tóth, I. J. – King L. P.: Are EU funds a corruption risk? The impact of EU funds on grand corruption in Central and Eastern Europe. Working Paper Series: CRCB-WP/2013:03.

The paper explores the impact of EU funds on institutionalised grand corruption in public procurement between 2009-2012 in three countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. We analyse a unique pooled database containing contract-level public procurement information for all three countries. We develop a composite corruption risks indicator based on the incidence and logical structure of ‘red flags’ in read more

CRCB-WP/2013:02

Working Papers

Fazekas, M – Tóth, I. J. – King, L. P.: Anatomy of grand corruption: A composite corruption risk index based on objective data. Working Paper Series: CRCB-WP/2013:02.

This paper develops 30 novel quantitative indicators of grand corruption that operationalize 20 distinct techniques of corruption in the context of public procurement. Each indicator rests on a thorough qualitative understanding of rent extraction from public contracts by corrupt networks as evidenced by academic literature, interviews and media content analysis. Feasibility and usefulness of the proposed indicators are read more

CRCB-WP/2013:01

Working Papers

Fazekas, M. – Tóth, I. J. – King, L. P.: Corruption manual for beginners. “Corruption techniques” in public procurement with examples from Hungary. Working Paper Series: CRCB-WP/2013:01.
This paper develops 30 novel quantitative indicators of grand corruption that operationalize 20 distinct techniques of corruption in the context of public procurement. Each indicator rests on a thorough qualitative understanding of rent extraction from public contracts by corrupt networks as evidenced by academic literature, interviews and media content analysis. Feasibility and usefulness of the proposed indicators are read more