The new issue of Public Sector Economics contains contributions to the Institute of Public Finance conference held in Zagreb in November 2017. It starts with the Editors’ introduction to the Public Sector Economics 2017 Conference Issue – Public investment: catalyst for sustainable growth by Katarina Ott and Dubravko Mihaljek. In keynote speeches Balázs Égert deals with policy drivers of the unusually weak business investment in many advanced economies following the recent crisis; Evžen Kočenda examines links between public investment, banking sector and sovereign risk; while Matthias Kollatz-Ahnen and Markus J. Roick analyse the global shortfall in infrastructure investment, particularly at the municipal level in Europe. In introductory notes Zdravko Marić reviews the evolution of private and public investment in Croatia and identifies conditions for their medium term pick-up; Manica Hauptman warns that despite the return of more favourable financing conditions, investment in EU has not reached its pre-crisis levels; and Zrinka Živković Matijević emphasizes the importance of human capital investment in Croatia. Ehtisham Ahmad, Annalisa Vinella and Kezhou Xiao focus on public-private partnerships as vehicles for infrastructure projects. Sanja Borkovic and Peter Tabak investigate the relationship between public investment and productivity of Croatian firms. Gökçen Yilmaz studies how the allocation of public investment affected productivity growth in Turkey in 1975-2001. Maria Manuel Campos and Hugo Reis study the evolution of private returns to schooling in the Portuguese economy during 1986-2013. The issue ends with a review of Jean Tirole’s landmark book “Economics for the Common Good”.

In the new Newsletter Katarina Ott, Mihaela Bronić and Branko Stanić provide basic information on the grants received by Croatian counties, cities and municipalities as holders of, or partners/participants in the programmes and projects (co)financed by the EU in 2015 and 2016. Also available is a downloadable database in Excel that enables detailed analysis and comparison with data from previous years. In the period 2015-2016, counties, cities and municipalities received almost one billion kuna in EU grants, much more than in previous years. Almost half of that amount was utilized by counties, about one third by cities and less than a fifth by municipalities. It is noteworthy, however, that almost half of cities and over three quarters of municipalities used no grants at all in the reference period.