On Tuesday, 8 April 2014 Velibor Mačkić from the Faculty of Economics and Business Zagreb held lecture at the Institute of Public Finance entitled Political Economy of Fiscal Policy.

Since the beginning of the new millennium economic results in Croatia can clearly be divided in two periods, regarding GDP growth rates and unemployment. Independently, the constant throughout the entire period is budget deficit at all governmental units: national, regional and local. The lecturer indicated the political constraints as potential explanations of those phenomena. He presented the existing political-economic models with emphasis on models of political budget cycles while in the empirical part of lecture he discussed the results of research performed at regional and local level in Croatia, from 2002 to 2011. The goal was to answer the following questions: Are there political budget cycles in counties and the largest Croatian cities? Which theoretical model do they correspond to? Is there an increase in budget expenditures in election years if the executive government on central and regional/local level come from the same party?

The lecture was based on the paper Political budget cycles at the municipal level in Croatia published in the journal Financial Theory and Practice. The paper is also available online in Croatian: Političko-proračunski ciklusi na uzorku hrvatskih gradova. The paper won the Marijan Hanžeković Foundation award for the best paper in regular category for 2013.

Anto Bajo and Maja Kolarec in the Newsletter entitled The status and financial operations of state agencies in Croatia analyze the number of employees in agencies, annual budgets and their financial assets. Financial position of the governmental agencies is excellent and the Government and competent ministries should determine the status and the role of agencies in the system of state finance of the Republic of Croatia.

In the Press Release entitled Non-profit, private or public?, Anto Bajo and Maja Kolarec comment on a Proposal for a Non-profit Financial Operations and Accounting Act, sent by the Government to parliamentary procedure.