Estimating the effect of discretionary spending on corruption: evidence from Brazilian municipalities

• Autor(a) principal: Assumpção, André
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/10166
• topic: Corrupção; Discricionariedade do gasto público; Licitações; Políticas públicas; Administração pública; Políticas públicas - Brasil; Corrupção administrativa - Brasil; Discricionariedade administrativa; Administração municipal - Corrupção - Brasil; Licitação pública - Brasil

This paper analyzes the relationship between corruption and discretion of public spending in answering to the following research question: tighter procurement rules, as a proxy to discretion in spending, result in lower prevalence of corruption in Brazilian municipalities. The empirical strategy conducted here draws from a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression approach locally estimated in each cutoff of procurement categories. Corruption data is drawn from the CGU's audit program and discretion categories from Bill 8.666/93, which regulates all procurement processes for purchases of goods/services and public works in all government levels. Results show, however, that lower discretion is associated with higher corruption prevalence to most cutoffs of Bill 8.666/93 in both purchases and works subgroups.