TY - JOUR
T1 - Scaling behavior of public procurement activity
AU - Curado, António
AU - Damásio, Bruno
AU - Encarnação, Sara
AU - Candia, Cristian
AU - Pinheiro, Flávio L.
N1 - Curado, A., Damásio, B., Encarnação, S., Candia, C., & Pinheiro, F. L. (2021). Scaling behavior of public procurement activity. PLoS ONE, 16(12), 1-19. [e0260806]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260806 --- Funding information: F.L.P. and B.D. acknowledge the financial support provided by FCT Portugal under the project UIDB/04152/2020 - Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC). S.E. acknowledges the financial support of FCT and ESF, for project grant SFRH/BPD/1169337/2016 and FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the project UIDB/04647/2020 of CICS.NOVA - Centro Interdisciplinar de Ciências Sociais da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
PY - 2021/12/8
Y1 - 2021/12/8
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260806
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85120832952&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000754625200030
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0260806
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0260806
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 16
SP - 1
EP - 19
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 12
M1 - e0260806
ER -