Worldwide Trends in Public Procurement Efficiency Studies Under the Lens of Award Criteria

Abstract

This study aims to review the existing research on public procurement efficiency related to the evaluation criteria in the bid process. These can be grouped into two main approaches based on the lowest price criterion (LP) or via a multi-criteria assessment (MC). To this end, a bibliometric analysis was carried out, including an advanced search by topic and content analysis. The results of the analysis were documents published from 2006 to the beginning of May 2024 by authors from 47 countries. Of these, 79 were related to the LP criterion and 125 to the MC assessment. The main findings of this study show that the research on efficiency in public procurement has evolved towards the use of both monetary and non-monetary criteria. This trend is more prevalent in countries with high economic performance. Despite public procurement efficiency being an international topic, more collaboration among researchers from different countries is necessary. Moreover, this study shows the focus on research on metrics and initiatives for implementing environmental criteria and the need to pay more attention to social efficiency.