Public Procurement as a Demand-Side Innovation Policy in Burkina Faso: The Necessity to Search for Failure Sources

Abstract

In developed countries, public procurement is used to incentivize private companies to invest in innovation. But, governments of developing countries fail to do as much. However, since the size of the market in these countries is small, obtaining and carrying out large public contracts are opportunities that private companies must seize in order to innovate. This present research analyzes the effect of public procurement on the incentive of private companies to innovate. We use primary data collected from private companies participating in large public tenders in Burkina Faso. The results obtained from probit model with instrumental variables (IV probit) show that public procurement effectively exerts positive externalities on the incentive of private companies to innovate. However, to further increase the influence of public procurement on the private companies’ incentive to innovate, the government needs to ensure that the procurement process is free from imperfections such as corruption and information asymmetries that may limit their efficiency in this area. Keywords: Public Procurement, Innovation, Private Enterprises, Corruption, Burkina Faso. JEL Codes: D21, L14, O31.