Barriers to Public Procurement: A Review and Recent Patterns in the EU

The international dimension of public procurement has gained in importance in the last decade and has attracted the attention of economist and policy makers. A number of trade agreements were signed with the intention to remove barriers to procurement markets and favour entry of foreign firms and products. However, empirical evidence shows that, despite the existence of trade agreements, discrimination towards foreign firms still applies in a number of countries around the world. In this paper, we discuss the methodologies used in the economic literature for the identification of overt and covert barriers to public tenders and some empirical evidence from the EU, TED database. We stress the importance of collecting high quality data for meliorating the ability of international traders to detect procurement barriers.