A successful process of reducing price gouging and bringing corrupt practices into light has been the collection and publication of price information. This can be performed by public agencies and by civil society as well. It can consist for example of a comparison of itemised prices for comparable goods or services across government agencies, and even better, a comparison between them and the market prices.

For example, an initiative implemented by Transparencia Brazil includes an On-line interactive tool (http://www.licitassist.org.br/desempenho) aimed at providing comparative information on the public markets involving all 293 municipalities of the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil since the 1990s. The tool provides market shares, distribution of contracts among firms and municipalities, quantities and unit price comparisons among a selected set of commodities (fuels and cement). Sets of social and economic indicators (the municipal Human Development Indicator and its three components, municipal automotive fleets) can be selected by the visitor to perform regression analyses. Overall, the database includes data from 72,000 different private providers, 120,064 public procurement events and 2,033,520 purchased items.42