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Political Connections and Public Procurement: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Palanský, Miroslav ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Soudek, Jan (referee)
According to the existing literature, political connections can add value to the connected firms. This thesis analyzes whether political connections created by donations to political parties affect the allocation of public funds through procurement spending in the Czech Republic. Using a novel dataset on all corporate political contributions made between 2006 and 2013, it focuses on the extreme change in control of the regional councils following the 2008 elections. We start by observing the general patterns of behavior of regional governments as contracting authorities which seem to support the potential of corruption. In the second part, we focus on the effects of donations to the two most powerful political parties in the regional councils during the examined period on regional public procurement outcomes. The applied econometric methods suggest that donating companies win public contracts of higher value compared to non-connected firms in times when their supported party is in power. Controlling for the size of the firms, the results remain significant and confirm the notion that larger companies win contracts of higher value than smaller firms. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Political Connections and Distortions on Public Procurement Markets: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Navrátilová, Alice ; Palanský, Miroslav (advisor) ; Janský, Petr (referee)
Corporate political connections have been shown to induce preferential treatment towards connected firms. This thesis evaluates whether the effect of connections is reflected in the composition of public procurement suppliers in Czechia, using municipal procurement awarded between 2006 and 2020. In particular, we hypothesise that changes in municipal mayors affected the rate of new procurement suppliers following the elections in 2014 and 2018. The findings show that the rate of new suppliers increased significantly in municipalities that elected a new mayor in the 2014 elections; however, the effects appeared to be negative in 2018. We further hypothesise that these results can be driven by the major success of new political parties in 2014, with a large share of new politicians being elected to office. We specifically examine the case of ANO, the political movement that dominated both elections. We do not find robust evidence of a surge in new suppliers in municipalities where ANO was notably successful, suggesting that the effect was not driven only by this party and pointing to alternative explanations.
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The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Palanský, Miroslav ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic Miroslav Palanský Abstract This thesis estimates the value of political connections in the Czech Republic and it is divided into two parts. The first one explores the recently extended, most advanced publicly available data set on political party financing in the Czech Republic, covering the time period 1995-2015. We analyze basic patterns in party funding and their development over time. We focus primarily on private funding from both legal and natural persons. The data show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the volume of private funding across parties and over time, but contributions from the government budget remain the most important source of income for all larger parties. We analyze the available data on donations and discuss several issues regarding the notion that donors may view contributions as investment, yielding possible profits in the future. In the second part, we use the data set of corporate donations to construct a proxy variable for political connections and to estimate the effect of being connected to a political party on the financial performance of such firms. We find that the connected firms perform significantly better than the non- connected ones in the years following the establishment of the...
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Political connections and ruling in public procurement disputes: Are the decisions of the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition politically biased?
Viktorinová, Marie ; Palanský, Miroslav (advisor) ; Janský, Petr (referee)
Marie Viktorinová Abstract The data about financial support of firms and individuals to politicians provide an incentive for research as the connections between businesses and politics raises the problem of conflict of interest. Using data about results of disputes in public procurement tenders from 2004 to 2018, data about donations to political parties and data about parties in power of municipalities, regions and ministries between the years 2006 and 2018, this thesis investigates the effect of political connections on the results of disputes in public procurement. The analyze focuses on hypotheses about significant effect of having complainant or chosen contestant connected to party in power of government, municipality, region or ministry on the result of dispute being serious misconduct against fair competition, where distinct subsets of disputes with respective contracting authority are considered. Using logistic and probit regressions, the results of this thesis point out a significant positive relationship between misconduct found and chosen contestant connected to any party. Finally, the thesis lays down its constrictions and few suggestions for future research.
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The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Palanský, Miroslav ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic Miroslav Palanský Abstract This thesis estimates the value of political connections in the Czech Republic and it is divided into two parts. The first one explores the recently extended, most advanced publicly available data set on political party financing in the Czech Republic, covering the time period 1995-2015. We analyze basic patterns in party funding and their development over time. We focus primarily on private funding from both legal and natural persons. The data show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the volume of private funding across parties and over time, but contributions from the government budget remain the most important source of income for all larger parties. We analyze the available data on donations and discuss several issues regarding the notion that donors may view contributions as investment, yielding possible profits in the future. In the second part, we use the data set of corporate donations to construct a proxy variable for political connections and to estimate the effect of being connected to a political party on the financial performance of such firms. We find that the connected firms perform significantly better than the non- connected ones in the years following the establishment of the...
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EU and State Grants Distribution in the Czech Republic: The Effect of Political Connections
Kopeček, Martin ; Palanský, Miroslav (advisor) ; Turnovec, František (referee)
This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part analyses recently published data from the Central Grant Registry (CEDR) on state grant distribution in Czechia between 1999 and the present year. In the second part, I link this data to information on political connections established through donations to parties and examine whether politically connected firms are more successful in competing for state grants. I match the donating firms to non-donating but otherwise similar firms using propensity scores based on a number of observable characteristics. The results indicate that donating companies have a 40% higher success rate in receiving state grants compared to non-donating firms. I find that the effect is higher for grants from the state budget than for grants from EU funds, which is consistent with EU-funded grants being subject to stricter regulations. JEL Classification D72, D73, H2, H71, H81 Keywords grants, subsidies, donations, political connections Author's e-mail martin.kopecek@smallhill.cz Supervisor's e-mail miroslav.palansky@gmail.com
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Does donating to political parties pay off? Evidence from the Czech Republic
Navrátilová, Alice ; Palanský, Miroslav (advisor) ; Semerák, Vilém (referee)
According to the existing literature, political connections can lead to favouritism towards the connected companies. This thesis approximates connections through donations to political parties and analyses their effect on the value of public procurement administered by Czech Ministries between 2007 and 2017. Donations from legal entities are used along with contributions from natural persons who are matched with companies' officials to account for the possibility of masking the real identity of donors. We analyse the impact of donations on procurement from three perspectives. Firstly, we focus on donations made to parties with the largest representation in government, but do not find that firms connected to these parties win more favourable procurement contracts. We then extend the analysis to include other political parties present in the Chamber of Deputies during the examined period and each election term is assessed separately. The results suggest that donating firms received contracts of higher value than non-donating firms during two of the three election periods. Finally, we develop a novel panel-based approach with the aim to determine whether there exists a causal relationship between political connections and public procurement. The results show that connections to political parties...
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State capture as market distortion: Effect of political connections in the Czech Republic
Špolc, Martin ; Vacek, Pavel (advisor) ; Kameníček, Jiří (referee)
Politically connected firms may extract rent which significantly improves their financial performance, but with social costs to others in form of market distortions. The thesis presents the first empirical analysis of personal political connections to government ministers in the Czech Republic. We estimated value of political connections and inspected subsidies and public procurements allocation as channels of rent extraction on firm-level data set of 1993-2015 period. For both approaches, cross-section regressions and dynamic matching on covariates and propensity score, we found that connected firms significantly underperform their similar rivals, but slightly improve their performance over the time of connection to minister in office. Connected firms gain significantly more subsidies which confirms subsidy allocation as a channel of rent extraction. We interpret our results that firms may seek political connections as the last option how to improve their bad financial results and remain on the market. Biased subsidy allocation to connected firms in sectors where firms are dependent on subsidies like agriculture creates market distortions and could lead to significant consumer harm.
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The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Palanský, Miroslav ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic Miroslav Palanský Abstract This thesis estimates the value of political connections in the Czech Republic and it is divided into two parts. The first one explores the recently extended, most advanced publicly available data set on political party financing in the Czech Republic, covering the time period 1995-2015. We analyze basic patterns in party funding and their development over time. We focus primarily on private funding from both legal and natural persons. The data show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the volume of private funding across parties and over time, but contributions from the government budget remain the most important source of income for all larger parties. We analyze the available data on donations and discuss several issues regarding the notion that donors may view contributions as investment, yielding possible profits in the future. In the second part, we use the data set of corporate donations to construct a proxy variable for political connections and to estimate the effect of being connected to a political party on the financial performance of such firms. We find that the connected firms perform significantly better than the non- connected ones in the years following the establishment of the...
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