The Impact of Emergencies on Corruption Risks: Italian Natural Disasters and Public Procurement

Theory and case studies suggest that emergencies and disasters increase corruption, especially in public procurement, hampering relief and reconstruction efforts. Despite a growing interest in the topic, including in research, there is still little systematic evidence about these effects, their structure and trajectories. We set out to investigate the medium‐term impact of disasters on corruption risks, using large‐scale administrative data on public tenders in Italy from 2007 to 2020, combined with data on 5 natural disasters. We employ logistic regression, coarsened exact matching and difference‐in‐differences estimators. We find that disasters increase corruption risks in the medium‐term (3 or more years after the disaster), even more than on the short term (1 year after the disaster). In the matched and diff‐in‐diff analyses, we find 3%–10% points more non‐open procedures used, 19%–21% points fewer call for tenders published, 19%–29% points more tenders with short advertisement period and 14%–17% points more single bidding tenders. Our findings highlight the importance of ring‐fencing corruption risks associated with disaster response, especially in the medium to long term.