Strengthening the Level of Integrity of Public Procurement at the Execution Phase : Evidence from the Italian National Frame Contracts

The risks of integrity arising at the execution stage of public procurement processes are often overlooked. When contract award and contract management are handled by different public authorities integrity concerns about contract execution become more acute. Data from the monitoring mechanism of the National Frame Contracts awarded by Consip S.p.A. - the Italian Public Procurement Agency - show a very weak level of contract enforcement. We conduct a regression analysis to assess to what extent contract mismanagement may depend upon the intrinsic characteristics of the contracts and/or the nature of the public authority using the contract itself