The new issue of Public Sector Economics contains contributions to the Institute of Public Finance conference held in Zagreb in October 2018. It starts with the Editors’ introduction to the Public Sector Economics 2018 Conference – Introduction to the Public Sector Economics 2018 Conference – Fiscal Openness: Transparency, Participation and Accountability in Fiscal Policies.

In keynote speeches James E. Alt traces the evolution of the concept of fiscal transparency in academic and policy agendas over the past three decades; and Francisco Bastida highlights the quality rather than quantity aspects of transparency as the key to the strengthening of public trust in government. Sandra Švaljek, Ivana Rašić Bakarić and Marijana Sumpor in the article Citizens and the city: the case for participatory budgeting in the City of Zagreb test some conclusions from the transparency literature in a case study of participatory budgeting in the city of Zagreb, Croatia’s capital. Lobna M. Abdellatif, Mohamed Zaky, Mohamed Ramadan, Jad Mazahreh and Ibrahim Elghandour in the article Transparency of law making and fiscal democracy in the Middle East use the Open Budget Index dataset to measure the quality of the law-making process for government budgets in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. Ana Ostrovidov Jakšić and Ivan Jakšić in the article How to prolong labour market participation in the Republic of Croatia? analyse the labour market for older workers from the point of view of prolonging their participation in the labour market in the Republic of Croatia. This issue ends with a review of Louis Meuleman’s book Metagovernance for Sustainability: A Framework for Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. 

The Faculty of Economics and Business, Zagreb, the Institute for Public Finance and KPMG Croatia d.o.o. under the auspices of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Energy organize Conference Energy strategic priorities and capital investments in Croatia, which will be held on March 29, 2019 at the Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb. The goal of the conference is to encourage the exchange of ideas and opinions and provide practical recommendations for improving the Croatian energy market through the dialogue of the main participants in the energy market and the state. The conference is intended for all public and private companies, business consultants, engineers, economists and lawyers, academic community, governmental and non-governmental organizations.