My experience working my way up from small companies didn't really bear this out. Budgets at my bigish company are strict and audited; having a contractor results in regular check-ins from managers to see if it can be cut off. The smallest companies I worked for were family slush funds.

Interestingly enough there is also evidence, that a government structure with much smaller parts (decentralization) is even more inefficent, and especially prone to corruption.

Yes, this. It's worth emphasizing whenever someone trots out the inefficient-government dogma.