ABSTRACT
The regulatory environment is stuck at the level of ensuring general transparency, while it stipulates exclusion and irregularity as legal consequences. In the absence of an unambiguous possibility to control, the strategy of transparency in combating corruption can be implemented only to a moderate degree. The probability of corruption is endogenously determined by the choice of the supervisor, which, in turn, depends on the level of discretion. Supervisor and Official thus play a game where the optimal discretion level is decreasing in the expected corruption and the optimal corruption level is increasing in the expected discretion. Picci suggests using IT technologies to publish the results of similar tenders across the country on user-friendly platforms so as to allow public procurement stakeholders to monitor contract characteristics across administrations. Picci also proposes a governance model of public works that relies on an internet-based “reputation system.
