Bid Protests in Public Procurement: Czech Case

Bid protest mechanisms provide supervision over public procurement processes. If set up properly, these mechanisms improve both ex-ante and ex-post e - ciency of public procurement. However, decentralisation of the oversight can create opportunities for bidders to strategically abuse the system at the soci- ety's expense. In order to assess e ciency of the Czech bid protest mechanism, an empirical policy analysis of was conducted using a unique combined dataset of all bid protest rulings of the Czech supervising authority linked to a com- plete dataset of public contracts procured between 2007 and 2014. Econometric methods for panel data analysis were employed in order to estimate e↵ects of bid protesting on returns in form of awarded contracts. The selected approach made it possible to focus on individual relationships between contracting au- thorities and their suppliers. The results show significant di↵erences between returns of protest against EU co-funded and EU unfunded contracts. Moreover signs of strategical system abuse related to public works contracts were found