Public Purchasing Research Articles

The Role of the State as Buyer Under UN Guiding Principle 6

Public procurement is the purchase by the public sector of the goods and services it needs to carry out its functions. It has an essential role to play in facilitating States’ fulfilment of their duties to protect, respect, and fulfil human rights. Equally, government buying accounts for a significant proportion of the overall global economy. Worldwide, it has a value of approximately €1000 billion per year and it comprises, for instance, on average 12% GDP in OECD countries. As “mega-consumers,” governments have the purchasing power to set standards that can shift markets towards sustainable production, to exercise leverage over suppliers towards this goal – and to lead by example in introducing human rights into supply chain management by establishing arrangements for human rights due diligence. In the past, however, little consideration has been given to the human rights impacts of the central state and other public bodies in terms of their role as a consumer. This lack of policy coherence undermines fulfilment of the UN Framework and UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This submission addresses this gap by starting to clarify states’ human rights responsibilities regarding public procurement and identifying emerging good practices through which public buyers can fulfil these responsibilities. It defines public procurement and provides a brief account of its role, scale and relevance in the business and human rights context; outlines how public procurement is currently regulated under international and regional legal frameworks, with reference to instruments such as the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), EU procurement rules and the UNCITRAL Model Law, as well as relevant policy frameworks, including those concerning “responsible global value chains”. It demonstrates how human rights can be integrated into the procurement cycle with reference to concrete examples. Measures promoting respect for human rights in public procurement emerging from National Action Plans on business and human rights (NAPs) are also considered. Finally, it presents recommendations for states and other procurement regulators, and other relevant stakeholders, including national human rights institutions (NHRIs), civil society organisations (CSOs), the UN system and business associations regarding the further development of public procurement as an element of the obligation to protect human rights in the context of business operations.

Court Efficiency and Procurement Performance

AbstractDisputes over penalties for breaching a contract are often resolved in court. A simple model illustrates how inefficient courts can sway public buyers from enforcing a penalty for late delivery in order to avoid litigation, thereby inducing sellers to delay contract delivery. By using a large dataset on Italian public procurement, we empirically study the effects of court inefficiency on public work performance. Where courts are inefficient, we find the following: public works are delivered with longer delays; delays increase for more valuable contracts; contracts are more often awarded to larger suppliers; and a higher share of the payment is postponed after delivery. Other interpretations receive less support from the data.

Green Technology Firms and Sustainable Public Purchasing

For green technology firms, government's shifting preference for sustainable products and services is likely to become an increasingly important market factor. Green technology firms are thus in an excellent position to respond to greater calls for environmentally friendly products and services and derive market advantages from doing so. Moreover, green technology firms possess the knowledge, expertise, and experience that can increase local governments’ SPP adoption and implementation success. Drawing from the results of two recent studies, this paper presents five reasons why green technology firms should care about local governments’ recent trend toward SPP adoption.

Організація планування розслідування злочинів, що вчиняються під час публічних закупівель у сфері охорони здоров’я

Організація планування розслідування злочинів, що вчиняються під час публічних закупівель у сфері охорони здоров’я

Policy Consultation to Expand FDI Attractiveness of the Pardis Technology Park

The derived policy recommendations are that PTP should establish its role as a leader in national research recurrence and there should be no barriers of attracting high-quality human resources by improving education, residence and transportation problems for PTP. Attracting joint prototype production centers and inspection, test and certification bodies for the products of SMEs in the PTP region is necessary and the establishment of a production technology research institute for the activation of the rear production complex and the product innovation for the products which are difficult to produce in the PTP because of environmental regulation. Lastly, in order to attract more active foreign investment, it is necessary to present a plan to attract investment that links rich oil and mineral resources in Iran, secure a unified investment attraction window, and present a policy mix considering technology and marketing and public purchasing of products. If we take advantage of the present policy proposal from the problems presented in Daedeok Innopolis in the past and the advantages of the current PTP to attract more FDI, it will help the growth and development of Iran and PTP.

Constraints on restoring landforms and habitats on storm-damaged shorefront lots in New Jersey, USA

Removal of shorefront houses following storm damage can provide opportunity to restore landforms and habitats and reduce risk to people and property. This opportunity was evaluated on the ocean coast of New Jersey, USA, following Hurricane Sandy, which occurred 29 October 2012. Houses were removed from 79 of 339 private shorefront lots in the 9 km-long segment having the greatest damage. Sixty lots remained empty four years after the storm. Mean dimensions of these empty lots were 66.3 m across shore and 23.4 m alongshore. Mean area of vegetation cover was 49.8% prior to the storm and 17.7% after the storm. The lots showed little indication of active landscaping after debris clearance, and the lots lacked topographic and vegetation diversity. The real estate value of empty lots appears too great for public purchase, and lots are weak points in shore protection plans when left to evolve naturally. A new bulkhead and extension of a pre-existing seawall built after the storm now isolate the former dune from the active backshore, eliminating natural sediment exchange between beach and dune on 47 of the 60 lots. Loss of the linkage between the backshore and dune caused by shore-parallel walls need not prevent restoration of native vegetation typical of the more stable backdune environments. Restoration actions that do not require buyout of properties for public use can contribute to the diversity, aesthetic appeal and resilience of the dune. The natural image may influence acceptance of natural vegetation and favor acceptance of managed retreat in the future when occupation of the shorefront becomes less tenable.

Protection Motivation and Communication through Nanofood Labels

The development and use of nanotechnology in the food industry (nanofood) have grown steadily. While visions for nanofood suggest that the applications will improve quality and safety, they are also controversial for several reasons including potential health risks coupled with difficulty in assessing low-dosage nanoparticle risks as well as values-based objections. In recent years, debate over nanofoods has sparked inquiry into factors that predict public attitudes and purchase intentions. Such studies have investigated the roles of demographics and sociographics, value predispositions toward science and technology, preferences for natural products, trust in regulatory agencies, scientific knowledge, and media attention. This study assesses the role of each of these factors in shaping public attitudes toward nanofood and improves the predictive models by evaluating concepts from protection motivation theory. We find that incorporating threat and coping appraisals provides the best predictive models of public attitudes and intention to purchase nanofood products.

Green public procurement and multiple environmental objectives

Policy makers can employ different instruments to address environmental policy objectives, and the guiding principles for a consistent system of environmental policy are (1) the policies should be effective, (2) there should be one objective per instrument, and (3) multiple objectives and multiple policy instruments must be mutually independent of each other. This paper evaluates these three principles for green public procurement (GPP). As an illustrative example, the analysis refers to the Swedish policy of using public purchase of organic foods as a policy instrument to increase the certified organic agricultural area as a share of the total agricultural area. Our analysis shows that GPP fails to satisfy principles (1) and (3), and the only way to satisfy principle (2) is then to have just one objective with the procurement, i.e., to run the operations. GPP might still have a positive environmental impact, but, if applied, the procuring authority has to be very specific with the one-to-one matching of criterion and objective.

Public Procurement as a Tool for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights: a Study of Collaboration, Due Diligence and Leverage in the Electronics Industry

AbstractThis article explores the innovative use of public procurement as a tool to respect, protect and promote human rights by capitalizing on the significant leverage that public buyers have over corporate practices in their supply chain. It provides an analysis of Electronics Watch, an organization that focuses on the role of states’ own procurement practices as central to the state duty to protect the human rights of those who are affected by its activities as an economic actor. Through the assessment of the Electronics Watch model this article argues that by bringing together the economic leverage of public buyers and corporate human rights due diligence, one can create transformative tools for the improvement of working conditions in global supply chains.

ДЕРЖАВНІ ЗАКУПІВЛІ В СИСТЕМІ ЗАХОДІВ СТИМУЛЮВАННЯ РОЗВИТКУ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОЇ ЕКОНОМІКИ

ДЕРЖАВНІ ЗАКУПІВЛІ В СИСТЕМІ ЗАХОДІВ СТИМУЛЮВАННЯ РОЗВИТКУ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОЇ ЕКОНОМІКИ

АНАЛИЗ ИЗМЕНЕНИЙ НОРМАТИВНО-ПРАВОВЫХ АКТОВ, ЗАТРАГИВАЮЩИХ ОСУЩЕСТВЛЕНИЕ ЗАКУПОК У СУБЪЕКТОВ МАЛОГО И СРЕДНЕГО ПРЕДПРИНИМАТЕЛЬСТВА

The article notes the lack of growth in the share of small business in the Russian economy over the past 15 years, and indicates the need to change the current situation. This article focuses on the way to stimulate the development of small and medium-sized businesses (hereinafter referred to SMBs), namely to provide the support measures for public procurements and purchases on the Federal Law № 223-FZ. The last changes in normative legal acts affecting implementation of purchases on the Federal Law № 223-FZ, a special place in which is given to the support of small and medium business, are considered. The need for additional support measures is justified.

Uncertainty About QE Effects When an Interest Rate Peg is Anticipated

After hitting the lower bound on interest rates, the Eurosystem engaged in a public sector purchase programme (PSPP) and forward guidance (FG). We use prior and posterior predictive analysis to evaluate the importance of parameter uncertainty in an analysis of these policies. We model FG as an anticipated temporary interest rate peg. The degree of parameter uncertainty is considerable and increasing in the length of FG. The probability of being able to reset prices and wages is the most important factor driving uncertainty about inflation. In contrast, variations in financial intermediaries' net worth adjustment costs have little impact on in ation outcomes.

Federalizing a Central Bank: A Comparative Study of the Early Years of the FED and the ECB

In its early years, the Federal Reserve System struggled with making regional considerations subordinate to supraregional considerations. The importance of regional shocks, the strong exposure of banks to their regional economies, and the governance and shareholding structure of the Fed made the United States prone to regional feedback loops that had the ability to undermine the par convertibility of currency across the United States. The authors argue that these issues were finally put to rest when the relationship between the Federal Reserve banks and the federal government was clarified during the 1933 Banking Holiday and as mechanisms for ensuring automatic par clearance across the 12 Federal Reserve districts were improved. By comparison, the Eurosystem at its inception was far better designed to avoid the pitfalls of making national borders relevant in the conduct of monetary policy. But the modification of risk-sharing arrangements over the past few years — first as a by-product of the extension of its collateral framework and the growing importance of liquidity provision through the European Central Bank's (ECB) emergency liquidity assistance and then with the public sector purchase program—threaten to make euro area consideration subordinated to the national considerations of member states. In the spirit of the Rooseveltian reforms of the 1930s, the authors suggest the ECB would benefit from a form of political if not fiscal underwriting of the credit risks of its policies.

О понятии и содержании правового регулирования публичных закупок

The article discloses the concept of public procurement, as well as the general characteristics of the fundamental international legal instruments in the field of regulation of public procurement. Legal regulation of public procurement is a complex and continuous process of acceptance, adjustment and using of state legal norms regulating public procurement through the establishment of common rules, rights and duties of its subjects. According to the authors, organization of procurement and its management are one of the main instruments of state influence on the economy of the country, which is aimed at obtaining the necessary quality and quantity of goods and services from a reliable supplier at a competitive price for the needs of the state. In this regard, the examples of legal regulation of public procurement in some foreign countries are given. However, the authors consider the relationship between the concepts of «public procurement» and «public order», regulation of public purchases within some international organizations and also by the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In conclusion, the authors note the significance of public procurement to ensure not only the implementation of target programs, but also the economic, legal, and social development of the state as a whole.Key words: state procurement, public procurement, government procurement, WTO, UNCITRAL.

Advancing Respect for Labour Rights Globally through Public Procurement

Governments are mega-consumers of many manufactured products and services. As such they should in principle be able to influence workers’ rights abroad via the terms of purchase contracts. Yet to date little attention has been paid to the potential of public procurement to promote respect for labour rights globally besides the international trade law framework. Building on a limited emerging scholarship and policy developments, this article addresses this gap. Section 2 considers legal definitions of public procurement and distinguishes primary and secondary aims of procurement under key international and regional procurement regimes. This highlights that, although historically used to advance labour rights domestically, these regimes have restricted public buyers’ scope to advance labour rights beyond national borders. Section 3 explores new international policy frameworks on responsible global value chains and supply chains which by contrast appear to augur the greater use of public procurement to promote labour rights globally in future. Section 4 argues, supported by analysis of the limited examples available, that public buying has the potential to positively influence enjoyment of labour rights in practice. Concluding, Section 5 reflects on what the more specific impacts of public procurement in this context may be, and how public buying should complement other mechanisms for improving labour conditions across supply chains, such as social clauses in trade agreements. Finally, we outline issues for further research and the future policy agenda.

Eurosystem's Asset Purchases and Money Market Rates

Some Euro area money market rates have been standing below the deposit facility rate since 2015, which coincided with the start of the Eurosystem’s public sector purchase program (PSPP). In this paper, we explore empirically the interactions between the PSPP and short term secured money market rates (repo rates). We document different channels through which asset purchases may affect the various segments of the Euro area repo market. Using proprietary data from the PSPP purchases and transactions made on the repo market for specific securities (“special”), our results show that the PSPP has contributed to push down repo rate, in particular prior to January 2017. On average, purchasing 1% of a bond outstanding is associated with a decline in its repo rate of -0.78 bps.

A regional collaborative working to improve health care quality, outcomes, and affordability

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the Bree Collaborative’s background, history, structure, and work. Design/methodology/approach The Bree Collaborative was established by the Washington State Legislature to convene public and private health care stakeholders with the goal of identifying specific mechanisms to improve health care quality, outcomes, and affordability. These members are appointed by the Washington State Governor and represent public health care purchasers for Washington State, private health care purchasers (employers and union trusts), health plans, physicians and other health care providers, hospitals, and quality improvement organizations. Members annually select health care services that show high variation in care delivery, that are highly utilized without leading to better care or patient health, or that have known or suspected patient safety issues and develop recommendations for health care improvement. Findings Recommendations are meant to be implemented by the Washington State Health Care Authority and used to set a community standard across the state. Successful implementation depends on several factors including engaged health care purchasers, support from diverse partners, and a health care community willing to put the patient at the center of care. Originality/value Bottom-up, collective action through the Bree Collaborative can help achieve the triple aim for Washington State and should be used as a model nationally and internationally.

Buyers' Ability in Public Procurement: A Structural Analysis of Italian Medical Devices

Using a dataset of medical devices purchased by Italian Public Buyers (PBs), for each purchase, we measure the difference between each item's price and its marginal cost. We define PBs' ability in purchasing as PBs' fixed effect (FE) on that difference. We find that average prices vary substantially amongst PBs, and this variation is largely captured by PBs' FE. We then exploit the exogenous termination of the mandatory reference price regime to assess how discretion affects procurement performance, given each PB's ability. Our results highlight that reduced PBs' discretion - in presence of mandatory prices - determines efficiency gains and losses for low- and high-ability PBs, respectively.

TINGKAT KEPERCAYAAN DAN MINAT BELI MASYARAKAT BANJARMASIN TERHADAP PRODUK HIJAU BERDASARKAN SEGMENTASI DEMOGRAFIS

This study aims to assess the level of trust and intention in Banjarmasin’s public purchasing towards green products based on demographic variables such as gender, age, income, occupation, education and its influence on the level of trust and intention in public purchasing. This study is a survey research using questionnaires as an instrument. Population and sample used in this study is the community of Banjarmasin and taken as many as 150 respondents using non-purposive sampling method. The analysis technique used is (1) descriptive analysis of qualitative - quantitative and comparative analysis of the average using SPSS software; (2) the influence and correlation test was analyzed with SEM using IBM AMOS Software Version 22. The study found that: (1) the level of confidence and interest in people's purchasing Banjarmasin city is good enough for assessment respondents in a category; (2) The demographic segments of potential that can be used as a target market of green products : female, age 31-40 years, self-employed, earning between Rp 5 million - Rp 9,999 million and education level S-1 and S-3 (3) Segmentation demographic does not have a significant influence on the level of trust and intention in buying community towards green products because of the results of the SEM analysis for demoraphics CR value does not exceed 1.96 and the Sig. value is greater than 0.05 (4) demographic segmentation based on the type of work and level of education has a significant correlation only with trust variabels, but do not have a significant correlation with green purchase intention variabels. Keywords : Trust, purchase intention, green products, demographic segmentation

The Public Purchases in Romania, A Geopolitical Dynamic of Yesterday and Today Environment

This paper intends to briefly explain how the internal regulations have changed lately concerning the Romanian Public Purchases.