Two issues stand out in this conversation. The first concerns the unfinished business of the global fight against the scourge of poverty, which impacts one region more than most: Africa. At the same time, a key pre-requisite for economic performance - affordable and efficient public...

To date, government procurement has been effectively carved out of the main multilateral rules of the WTO system. This paper examines the systemic and other ramifications of this exclusion, from both an economic and a legal point of view. In addition to relevant elements of the WTO Agreements,...

Although both the academic and policy communities have attached great importance to measuring corruption, most of the currently available measures are biased and too broad to test theory or guide policy. This article proposes a new composite indicator of grand corruption based on a wide range of...

In December of 2011, the Parties to the World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) adopted significant revisions to the Agreement. The revised Agreement comprises (a) a much-needed modernization of the text of the Agreement, (b) an expansion of related market-access...

The seven essays in this volume address different issues related to green and innovation procurement as well as more general challenges in public procurement. These studies address both general, abstract problems of optimal public procurement and concrete cases of national or even local public...

The regulation of procurement within the European Union is binary: above certain financial thresholds, contracts are subject to full EU regulation, whereas below they are only subject to national rules (in general). First introduced in the 1970s, the financial thresholds are arbitrary without a...

Public procurement, one of the largest areas of public spending worldwide, gives public officials wide discretion. It is therefore unsurprising that it is also one of the government functions most often vulnerable to corruption. While there have been many qualitative accounts of high-level...

The 2014 EU procurement directives contain a greatly expanded set of provisions relating to socially responsible public procurement (SRPP). From the application of higher thresholds and ability to limit competition for certain contracts through to the use of social award criteria and contract...

We show that banks' lending exposure to firms with government procurement contracts can amplify the diabolic loop between sovereigns and banks. Using the fiscal austerity measures implemented during the 2010-2011 European sovereign debt crisis as a shock to government procurement, we find that...