Bio

Beatriz Costa Azevedo is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Minho. She benefits from an FCT Studentship for Doctoral Research and is integrated at the Centre for Research in Economics and Management (NIPE). Her PhD thesis, titled “Public procurement dynamics in Portuguese municipalities”, is being supervised by Professor Linda Gonçalves Veiga and Professor Francisco Veiga. She is also an Invited Assistant at the University of Minho. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics (2021) and a master’s degree in Economics (2023), both from the University of Minho. Previously, she was a Starting Researcher at NIPE, benefiting from an FCT Research Initiation Grant, and she completed an internship at the Microdata Research Laboratory of the Bank of Portugal (BPLIM). Her main research interests centre on Political Economy and Public Choice areas, focusing on the dynamics of Portuguese local governments.

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the existence of Political Budget Cycles (PBC) in local public procurement, specifically within Portuguese municipalities. By manipulating public procurement, politicians anticipate enhanced prospects of reelection. This research is grounded in a comprehensive and newly created dataset that compiles information on public procurement alongside the socio-demographic characteristics of Portuguese municipalities. The empirical approach includes both yearly and quarterly analyses, covering all 308 Portuguese municipalities over the period from 2010 to 2024. It employs a two-way fixed effects model and conducts an event study. The empirical results indicate that, on average, Portuguese municipalities award the same number of public contracts, but raise their mean value before municipal elections, resulting in a higher total value spent on public procurement. This increase in both the mean and total value of contracts apparently stems from a shift in public procurement composition toward more expensive and easily visible services, particularly construction works.

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