Politics, Policies and Public Procurement Efficiency: A Quantitative Study of 25 European Countries

Abstract

Public procurements are accounted for nearly one fifth of Gross Domestic Product in the European Union. Accordingly, the efficiency of public procurements has received immense attention of scholars and practitioners in the last few decades, particularly in the field of measuring a cross-country efficiency among the EU Member States. Nevertheless, the extant matrix is based solely on the outputs, thus capturing only a portion of determinants affecting the efficiency. Up to date, very little has been done in comparing the input-output efficiency. This paper aims to develop a set of input and output determinants of public procurement efficiency and compare the efficiency of public procurements of EU Member States. The results indicate that the efficiency based on input-output analysis significantly differs from any current analysis of procurement efficiency.