A group of researchers working on a British Academy/DFID Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (ACE)- funded project – Curbing corruption in government contracting – analyse how procurement can be manipulated for corrupt ends using a prize-winning ‘red flags’ methodology. They collect procurement tenders and contract datasets, with variables that indicate corruption risk, and use them to identify suspicious patterns and trends over time – the procuring entities and/or suppliers.

See for example the brief Curbing corruption in aid spending with recommendations for donors, and the working paper

Controlling corruption in development aid: New evidence from contract level data.

The project is led by Liz Dávid-Barrett and Mihály Fazekas, with research also undertaken by Bence Tóth, Ágnes Czibik and Isabelle Adam.