In the new Newsletter entitled Budget transparency in Croatian counties, cities and municipalities (November 2016 – March 2017) Katarina Ott, Mihaela Bronić, Miroslav Petrušić and Branko Stanić present the results of analysis of budget transparency of local government units measured by the number of  budget documents published on their official websites. The average budget transparency of local government units has improved year by year. In the current research cycle, it averages 3.1 (the maximum rank is 5), with counties already being very transparent (4.6 on average), cities fairly good (3.7 on average), but municipalities still lagging behind (2.8 on average). The results of the analysis for all counties, cities and municipalities are presented in the newsletter and can be searched in more detail on the interactive map.

In the new issue of Public Sector Economics, you can read a keynote speech by Ehtisham Ahmad Public investment for sustainable growth – managing subnational risks presented at the Institute of Public Finance’s Public Sector Economics Conference held in Zagreb in October 2016. Klaus Masuch, Edmund Moshammer and Beatrice Pierluigi in the paper Institutions, public debt and growth in Europe provide empirical evidence that supports the view that the quality of institutions is an important determinant of a long-term growth in European countries. Stjepan Gadžo and Irena Klemenčić in the paper Effective international information exchange as a key element of modern tax systems: promises and pitfalls of the OECD's common reporting standard explore some of the most important implications of the adoption of the Common Reporting Standard as a global automatic exchange of information model. Luka Šikić and Mislav Šagovac in the paper An international integration history of the Zagreb Stock Exchange examine the co-movement of the Croatian stock market with various European and global financial markets analysing long-term trends of the international financial integration of the Zagreb Stock Exchange as well as the separate impacts of major events that influenced financial markets in the last two decades. In the paper Crowdfunding – Croatian legal perspective and comparison to other sources of financing Katarina Đurđenić examines which existing legislation could be applied to crowdfunding, whether there is a need to introduce a new crowdfunding specific legislation and whether crowdfunding could be a substitute or only a possible complementary instrument for other sources of funding. Branko Stanić reviews the book Fiscal federalism 2016 – Making decentralisation work (editors: Hansjörg Blöchliger and Junghun Kim).