Scaling behavior of public procurement activity
Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Abstract: How can we know if local governments are spending public money efficiently? Public procurement accounts for a significant share of OECD countries’ expenditures. Therefore, governments are expected to execute them as efficiently as possible. Yet, there is a lack of methods that allowfor an adequate comparison of procurement activity between local authorities with different scales, representing a challenge for policymakers and academics. Here, we use methods from Urban Scaling Laws literature to study public procurement activity among 278 Portuguese municipalities. We find that public expenditure scales sub-linearly with population size, indicating economies of scale for public spending as cities increase their population. The scaling behavior persists after desegregating by contract type, namely Works, Goods, and Services. Moreover, using the Scale- Adjusted Indicators, which represent the deviations from the scaling laws, we characterize different patterns of procurement activity among regional groups. Thus, we obtain a new local characterization of municipalities based on the similarity of procurement activity. These results make up a framework for quantitatively study local public expenditure by enabling policymakers a more appropriate ground for comparative analysis.
Author: António Bernardo Curado Estevão
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3045516918