{"type":"script","doc_desc":{"producers":[{"name":"Reproducibility WBG","abbr":"DIME","affiliation":"World Bank - Development Impact Department","role":"Verification and preparation of metadata"}],"prod_date":"2025-04-08","version":"1"},"project_desc":{"authoring_entity":[{"name":"Qianmiao (Michelle) Chen","affiliation":"World Bank","email":"qianmiao@worldbank.org"}],"title_statement":{"title":"Reproducibility package for Rigging The Scores: Corruption Through Scoring Rule Manipulation In Public Procurement Auctions","idno":"RR_WLD_2024_226"},"data_statement":"All data sources are publicly available and included in the reproducibility package.","software":[{"name":"R","version":"4.4.2"},{"name":"Stata","version":"18.0 MP"},{"name":"Mosek","version":"10.2"}],"repository_uri":[{"name":"Reproducible Research Repository (World Bank)","uri":"https:\/\/reproducibility.worldbank.org"}],"production_date":"2025-04-08","abstract":"Public procurement is highly susceptible to corruption, especially in developing countries. Although open auctions are widely adopted to curb it, I document that corruption remains prevalent even within this procurement format. Procurement officers can collaborate with firms to manipulate scoring rules, ensuring predetermined winners, while corrupt firms submit non-competitive bids to meet minimum bidder requirements. Using extensive data from Chinese public procurement auctions, I introduce model-driven statistical tools to detect such corruption, identifying a corruption rate of 65%. A procurement expert audit survey confirms the tools\u2019 reliability, with a 91% probability that experts recognize suspicious scoring rules when flagged. Firm-level analysis reveals that local, state-owned, and less productive firms are favored in corrupt auctions. Lastly, I explore policy implications. Analysis of the national anti-corruption campaign since 2012 suggests that general investigations may be insufficient to address deeply ingrained corrupt practices. Using counterfactuals based on an estimated structural model, I find that implementing anonymous call-for-tender evaluations could improve social welfare by 10% by eliminating suspicious rues and encouraging broader participation.","geographic_units":[{"name":"World","code":"WLD"}],"keywords":[{"name":"Public Procurement"},{"name":"Open Scoring Auction"},{"name":"Corruption"}],"topics":[{"id":"H57","uri":"https:\/\/www.aeaweb.org\/econlit\/jelCodes.php?view=jel","vocabulary":"Journal of Economic Literature (JEL)","name":"Procurement","parent_id":"H5"},{"id":" D73","uri":"https:\/\/www.aeaweb.org\/econlit\/jelCodes.php?view=jel","vocabulary":"Journal of Economic Literature (JEL)","name":"Bureaucracy \u2022 Administrative Processes in Public Organizations \u2022 Corruption","parent_id":"D7"},{"id":" D44","uri":"https:\/\/www.aeaweb.org\/econlit\/jelCodes.php?view=jel","vocabulary":"Journal of Economic Literature (JEL)","name":"Auctions","parent_id":"D4"},{"id":" L44","uri":"https:\/\/www.aeaweb.org\/econlit\/jelCodes.php?view=jel","vocabulary":"Journal of Economic Literature (JEL)","name":"Antitrust Policy and Public Enterprises, Nonprofit Institutions, and Professional Organizations","parent_id":"L4"}],"output":[{"type":"Working Paper","description":"Policy Research Working Papers (PRWP)","title":"Rigging The Scores: Corruption Through Scoring Rule Manipulation In Public Procurement Auctions"}],"datasets":[{"name":"Public procurement data: Auction results with auction variables","note":"Dataset: scores.Rdata, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Firm registration data of bidders","note":"Dataset: firms.Rdata, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from qcc.com For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Public procurement data: Call-For-Proposals variables and results variables together","note":"Dataset: outcome_announce.Rdata, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Public procurement data: Bids and auction chart indicators for estimations and tests","note":"Dataset: df.Rdata, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Expert audit survey data","note":"Dataset: evaluation.Rdata, Source: Author","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Public procurement data: Price bids of bidders","note":"Dataset: price.Rdata, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Public procurement data: Region info of auctions","note":"Dataset: region.Rdata, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Bid evaluation with expert randomness","note":"Dataset: random.Rdata, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with a subsample of data from the Shenzhen Public Resources Trading Center.  The subsample includes procurement projects from October 1, 2022, to February 23, 2023. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package.","uri":"https:\/\/www.szggzy.com\/jygg\/list.html?id=zfcg"},{"name":"Firm registration data: Firm local\/small indicators for asymmetry","note":"Dataset: covariates.Rdata, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from qcc.com For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Call-For-Proposals variables with corruption investigation for all departments","note":"Dataset: announce_cor_full.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office, the Commission for Discipline Inspection and Wang, Y., & Dickson, B. J. (2022). How corruption investigations undermine regime support: evidence from China. Political Science Research and Methods, 10(1), 33-48. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Call-For-Proposals variables with corruption investigation for departments only ever under investigation","note":"Dataset: announce_cor.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office,  the Commission for Discipline Inspection and Wang, Y., & Dickson, B. J. (2022). How corruption investigations undermine regime support: evidence from China. Political Science Research and Methods, 10(1), 33-48. For more information, please refer to the README file.  ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Auction outcomes with corruption investigation for all departments","note":"Dataset: nbidders_cor_full.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office  the Commission for Discipline Inspection and Wang, Y., & Dickson, B. J. (2022). How corruption investigations undermine regime support: evidence from China. Political Science Research and Methods, 10(1), 33-48. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Auction outcomes with corruption investigation for all departments only ever under investigation","note":"Dataset: nbidders_cor.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from the Guangdong Government Procurement Office  the Commission for Discipline Inspection and Wang, Y., & Dickson, B. J. (2022). How corruption investigations undermine regime support: evidence from China. Political Science Research and Methods, 10(1), 33-48. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"New supplier for the local indicator with corruption investigation for all departments","note":"Dataset: newfirm.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from qcc.com, the Commission for Discipline Inspection and Wang, Y., & Dickson, B. J. (2022). How corruption investigations undermine regime support: evidence from China. Political Science Research and Methods, 10(1), 33-48. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Firm registration data: Firm characteristics","note":"Dataset: firms.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from qcc.com For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Firm registration data: Firm TFP with characteristics","note":"Dataset: dffirm.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author with data from qcc.com For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"County level panel statistics data: Linkage of region and county id","note":"Dataset: countyid.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author using county-level panel statistics data from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"County level panel statistics data: County panel variables","note":"Dataset: county_covs.dta, Source: the dataset was constructed by the author using county-level panel statistics data from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure. For more information, please refer to the README file. ","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package."},{"name":"Kang and Miller (2022) - US federal public procurement contracts","note":"Dataset: final_data.dta, Source: Kang, K., & Miller, R. A. (2021). Winning by Default: Why is There So Little Competition in Government Procurement? [Data set]. Zenodo. Version 2","access_type":"Publicly available and included in the reproducibility package.","uri":"https:\/\/zenodo.org\/records\/5108920","license":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International","license_uri":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/legalcode"}],"language":[{"name":"English","code":"EN"}],"technology_requirements":"The package takes approximately 360 hours to run. \nThis code is computationally intensive and executes multiple parallel processing operations. It requires a minimum of 32 GB of available memory and at least 64 GB of RAM, although more is recommended for optimal performance.\n","disclaimer":"The materials in the reproducibility packages are distributed as they were prepared by the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development\/The World Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this event do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Bank, the Executive Directors of the World Bank, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the materials included in the reproducibility package.","license":[{"name":"Modified BSD3","uri":"https:\/\/opensource.org\/license\/bsd-3-clause\/"}],"contacts":[{"name":"Qianmiao (Michelle) Chen","affiliation":"World Bank","email":"qianmiao@worldbank.org"},{"name":"Reproducibility WBG","affiliation":"World Bank","email":"reproducibility@worldbank.org"}],"reproduction_instructions":"To successfully reproduce this package:\n1. Install Mosek as outlined in the README and acquire a Mosek license\n2. Open the pp_corruption.Rproj file\n3. From RStudio, open and run the rcode\/Main.R script\n4. Adjusts the paths to Mosek (line 11) and Stata (line 51) and run the script\n5. Open statacode\/main do file. \n6. Adjust the ado path (line 3) and the directory path (line 11) and run the script\n7. From RStudio, open and run the rcode\/Appendix.R script (remember to re-initialized the pp_corruption.Rproj, if it was closed)\n8. Open statacode\/Appendix do file. \n9. Adjust the ado path (line 3) and the directory path (line 7) and run the script\n","technology_environment":"Machine 1\n- OS: Windows Server 2019 Standard\n- Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1145G7 CPU @ 2.60GHz\n- Memory available: 10 GB\n- Software version: Stata 18.0 MP, R Version 4.4.2\n\nMachine 2\n- OS: Windows 10 Enterprise 22H2\n- Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E7-4890 v2 @ 2.80GHz 2.79 GHz (16 processors)\n- Memory available: 64 GB\n- Software version: Stata 18.0 MP, R Version 4.4.2\n\nMachine 3\n- OS: Windows 10 Enterprise 22H2\n- Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E7- 4860 @ 2.27GHz 2.26 GHz (2 processors)\n- Memory available: 1TB\n- Software version: Stata 18.0 MP, R 4.4.2","reproducibility_status":{"note":"This reproducibility report covers results and exhibits from the main paper, and a randomized set of results and exhibits from Appendices A to E and H to I (see \"Results in the Annex\" section). Appendices F and G were not run due to technology requirements limitations."}},"tags":[{"tag":"DOI"},{"tag":"Open code"},{"tag":"Open data"}],"schematype":"script"}