Vitezslav Titl

EU Procurement and Subsidies

The current research agenda that Vitezslav Titl will work on during his stay at CESifo consists of two main research topics: 1) single-bidding in public procurement, and 2) European subsidies and their effects. In the first topic, he studies the causes and costs of low competition in public procurement. About 42 percent of public procurement contracts were single-bid in the European Union in 2021 – double the amount in 2011. Approximately €2 trillion is spent yearly on this market, making any inefficacy stemming from low completion a first-order issue. Firms with political connections appear to be more successful in winning such contracts. In the second topic, Mr. Titl studies how European subsidies influence sustainability of public procurement and whether these subsidies lead to misallocation in form of so-called “white elephant” projects. The European Cohesion Funds are one of the largest funds of its kind in the world with the annual budget of about €56 billion.

Mr. Titl’s research interests comprise the economics of the public sector, with special focus on the economics of the public procurement markets, and political economics. His research has been published in leading journals in economics and law including the European Economic Review, the Journal of Law & Economics or the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. He has presented his research at numerous international academic conferences as well as to practitioners including international organizations such as the European Commission, the European Parliament, OECD, and the World Bank.

Vitezslav Titl is an Assistant Professor of Law & Economics at Utrecht University School of Economics. He is also a member of the board of the Utrecht University Centre for Public Procurement, principal investigator of a Junior STAR grant at Charles University, and an affiliated researcher at KU Leuven and The Free University of Brussels. Dr. Titl obtained his PhD in Economics from KU Leuven and held visiting positions at leading academic institutions such as Bocconi University and Princeton University.