Previous research has shown that corruption risks may distort market incentives in high-risk contexts. However, there is a dearth of evidence on the potential impact of corruption in settings characterized by low corruption and high-quality institutions. Against that background, this paper delves deeper into the alleged consequences of corruption by examining the link between corruption risks in public procurement and the profitability of firms in the Swedish construction industry. We introduce a novel measure of corruption risk based on the share of single bidder contracts that a firm has won. Validity analysis confirms that our measure is correlated with an alternative corruption measure and local tender winners. Our results reveal that firms that win many single bidder contracts have higher profitability than other firms in the sector: 10 percentage points higher single bidding rate firms have a 0.2–0.6-percentage-point higher sales margin. The findings underscore that public procurement corruption risks distort markets and economic incentives, and that this risk is present even in low-corruption contexts such as in Sweden.

此前的研究表明，腐败风险可能会在高风险环境下扭曲市场激励。然而，缺乏证据表明腐败在低腐败和高质量机构的环境中的潜在影响。在此背景下，本文通过研究公共采购中的腐败风险与瑞典建筑业公司盈利能力之间的联系，更深入地探讨了所谓的腐败后果。我们引入了一种新颖的腐败风险衡量标准，该衡量标准基于公司赢得的单一投标人合同的份额。有效性分析证实，我们的措施与替代腐败措施和当地中标者相关。我们的结果表明，赢得许多单一投标人合同的公司比该行业的其他公司具有更高的盈利能力：单一投标率提高 10 个百分点的公司，销售利润率提高 0.2-0.6 个百分点。调查结果强调，公共采购腐败风险会扭曲市场和经济激励，即使在瑞典等低腐败环境中，这种风险也存在。