Does Greater Transparency Improve Outcomes in Public Procurement: the Case of Russia

This paper studies the influence of discretionary disclosure of information about the winners of purchases by entities regulated by Federal Law 223 on the outcomes of public procurement after the enactment of the Amendment N 1429 by the Government of the Russian Federation. As a result of the analysis of the sample containing 127552 contracts signed between January 2016 and November 2018, the evidence of positive statistically significant relation between the period of discretionary disclosure of information and the average execution time of contract is obtained and no evidence of the relation between the period of discretionary disclosure of information and the choice of purchase method and the average contract sum is obtained. Besides, as a result of using difference-in-differences methodology, no evidence of differential effect of discretionary information disclosure on outcomes of purchases by entities from regions with higher degree of competition in procurement is obtained.