Replication datasets for WB working paper "Green is less Greedy: Competition, Corruption, and Productivity in Green Public Procurement"

While green public procurement has been established as a desirable policy goal across the globe, especially in the European Union (EU), its scope and impacts remain to be severely under-studied. This paper provides insights into the prevalence and structure of green public procurement in Bulgaria, which is a sustainability laggard within the EU, hence a least likely champion of green public procurement. The paper also estimates the impacts of green procurement on traditional procurement and economic outcomes: competition, corruption risks, and overall productivity. Using novel data and more comprehensive methods than previous studies, we find that green public procurement (GPP) amounts to about 10-20% of total public procurement spending in Bulgaria in 2011-2019. Most GPP descriptors and requirements are found in titles, technical requirements and product descriptions. Green criteria in award criteria texts, which is mainly used for flagging GPP in the literature, have been marginal in comparison. GPP is estimated to improve competition for government contracts among firms, by for example increasing the prevalence of market entrants by 3-7 percentage points. GPP contracts are also less prone to corruption risks, for example they are 0.6-1.5 percentage point less likely to receive a single bidder. Finally, GPP enhances the efficiency of resource allocation in the economy by helping to channel public resources to more productive firms, for example to those which have 14% higher labour productivity. This effect is at least in part explained by the positive interaction between GPP and the lower risk of corruption. Our findings strengthen the case for pursuing green public procurement goals as they offer synergies with traditional public procurement goals.