Competitiveness in Slovak and Czech Public Procurement and its Effect on the Final Price

Public expenditures via public procurement accounts for a significant percentage of GDP - around 15 %. Most authors agree that there is an inversely proportional relation between competitiveness and the final price of the public procurement (Kuhlman and Johnson, 1983; Brannman, 1987; Rose-Akerman, 1999; Gupta, 2002; Pavel, 2010; and many others). According to some authors, price decreases caused by increasing competitiveness stop when there are 6-8 participating competitors and they describe this point as fully competitive procurement. When full competitiveness is reached, subsequent additional competitors have only a minimal or no impact on the final procurement price. The aim of our paper is to summarize and calculate competitiveness in Slovak and Czech public procurement between 2008 and 2014, and to evaluate the impact of the level of competition in public procurement on the final price, using regression analysis and weighted summary statistics. In the final part of our paper we compare our findings to those of the above noted experts.