Dataset Information

Scaling behavior of public procurement activity.

ABSTRACT: Public procurement refers to the purchase by public sector entities-such as government departments or local authorities-of Services, Goods, or Works. It accounts for a significant share of OECD countries' expenditures. However, while governments are expected to execute them as efficiently as possible, there is a lack of methodologies for an adequate comparison of procurement activity between institutions at different scales, which represents a challenge for policymakers and academics. Here, we propose using methods borrowed from urban scaling laws literature to study public procurement activity among 278 Portuguese municipalities between 2011 and 2018. We find that public procurement expenditure scales sublinearly with population size, indicating an economy of scale for public spending as cities increase their population size. Moreover, when looking at the municipal Scale-Adjusted Indicators (the deviations from the scaling law) by contract categories-Works, Goods, and Services-we are able to identify a richer local characterisation of municipalities based on the similarity of procurement activity. These results make up a framework for quantitatively studying local public expenditure by enabling policymakers a more appropriate foundation for comparative analysis.

SUBMITTER: Curado A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8654174 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Scaling behavior of public procurement activity.

Curado António A Damásio Bruno B Encarnação Sara S Candia Cristian C Pinheiro Flávio L FL

PloS one 20211208 12

Public procurement refers to the purchase by public sector entities-such as government departments or local authorities-of Services, Goods, or Works. It accounts for a significant share of OECD countries' expenditures. However, while governments are expected to execute them as efficiently as possible, there is a lack of methodologies for an adequate comparison of procurement activity between institutions at different scales, which represents a challenge for policymakers and academics. Here, we p ...[more]

PMID: 34879098

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Project description:Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) are known to drive innovations, economic growth, and job creation. Numerous studies have analysed small businesses' innovations using new products and processes, with indicators such as funding, innovation activities, and collaborations. However, other vital determinants such as public procurement contracts and intellectual property rights protections capable of influencing innovations have not received enough scholarly attention, especially in the context of Central European countries. This paper aims to examine whether public procurement contracts, market orientations, public subsidies, intellectual property rights, and other firm characteristics shape small businesses' innovation outcomes in the Czech Republic. The results based on a cross-sectional sample of 4,193 small businesses from the Community Innovation survey 2014 prove that European utility models positively influence major and minor forms of innovation but not general innovations. Our findings also show that foreign procurement contracts matter for small businesses' major and minor forms of innovation but not general innovations. Our results further demonstrate that exporting, collaborations with universities and other public research organizations, and external research and development positively influence major and minor forms of innovation but not general innovations. The results on the average treatment effects confirm that firms' collaborations with universities and public research organizations have the highest additionality effects on major and minor forms of innovations. Finally, we find evidence that firm size and belonging to the enterprise group positively impact small businesses’ general innovations. We conclude with practical implications for policymakers and firm managers in Visegrad economies on measures that could be adopted to develop and improve upon existing and new policy initiatives to increase the effect of major and minor innovation outcomes. Small businesses, Public procurement contracts, Major innovations, Minor innovations, Intellectual property rights, Utility models, Czech Republic.

Dataset Information

Scaling behavior of public procurement activity.

Publications

Scaling behavior of public procurement activity.

Similar Datasets

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