Public procurement reforms in greece: The impact of improved transparency on government expenditures

Abstract

During the recent economic crisis, public procurement reforms have received a great attention as a key mechanism that enables significant cost savings and improves transparency in the public sector, particularly in countries which are under a process of extensive fiscal consolidation like Greece. This paper examines the effects of improved transparency on public procurement cost in the light of the ongoing structural reforms taking place in Greece. The basic finding indicates that ensuring transparent practices in public procurement processes reduces government expenditures by about 1.8 - 3.4 percentage points. A dataset on 2309 public supply contracts for goods was used, supplementing the pooled OLS estimates with quantile regressions.