In the new issue of Public Sector Economics, Ozana Nadoveza in the article Do increases in public sector wages affect inflation?, assesses the potential pressures of high public sector wage growth in 2024 on inflation and shows that the direct impact on inflation was negligible due to the small share of the public sector in the consumer basket. However, depending on the assumptions, there was a certain indirect impact through increased aggregate demand and spillover effects on the private sector. The article was awarded as the best one in the regular category of the annual 2024 Hanžeković Foundation Competition.

Lucija Rašić and Noa Hinger, in the article Pressure on interest rates on deposits in Croatia: government bonds or European Central Bank?, explore how the issuance of national bonds in February 2023 provided citizens with a safe investment, especially after several years of low interest rates. Using a combination of principal component and regression analyses, they found the limited impact of government bonds and more significant one of the European Central Bank. The article was awarded as the best one in the student category of the annual 2024 Hanžeković Foundation Competition.

Mislav Brkić, in the article Bank profitability in the euro area in times of high inflation, demonstrates how rising interest rates have positively impacted bank profitability, a trend further reinforced by excess liquidity. In particular, since euro area banks held large stocks of excess liquidity, they were able to earn substantial risk-free interest income by simply putting their liquidity into the European Central Bank's deposit facility.

Georgios Kitsoleris and Tuan Anh Luong examine intragenerational occupational mobility: the effect of crisis and overeducation on career mobility in a segmented labour market in Greece. The empirical results reveal that tertiary graduates were more likely to move downward during the first period of the crisis even though overeducated workers had more possibilities to experience upward mobility. Overeducation in Greece seems to be the result of the increasing number of tertiary graduates, low proportion of high-skilled job positions and high levels of unemployment.

Samson Edo and Osaro Oigiangbe, in the article Fiscal policy burden accruing from public debt accumulation: theoretical effect on growth and empirical evidence, investigate how fiscal policy burden accruing from public debt affects economic growth in Sub-Saharan African countries between 1990 and 2022. The results support the view that the growth benefits of fiscal policy are constrained by large accumulations of public debt, validating the concern raised by multilateral institutions about the economic consequences of large and excessive debt accumulation. 

Gavin Ooft, in the article Do fiscal deficits cause inflation? Evidence from Suriname, empirically analyses the transmission of fiscal balance shocks to inflation in Suriname between 1961 and 2022. The empirical analysis reveals that exchange-rate shocks are the primary driver of inflation. Energy commodity price shocks also induce price pressures, in contrast to non-energy commodity price shocks. Fiscal shocks do not affect inflation directly. The results emphasize the importance of exchange-rate stability, while fiscal discipline can alleviate exchange-rate and inflationary pressures.

Finally, Filip Badovinac reviews a book A Taxing Journey – How Civic Actors Influence Tax Policy edited by Paolo De Renzio.