In the new issue of Public Sector Economics Mark Millin, David Fielding and P. Dorian Owen in the article Education spending, economic development, and the size of government examine differences in public spending on education (as a proportion of GDP and of total government spending) for economically (and politically) distinct groups of countries.

Jos L. T. Blank, Alex A. S. Van Heezik and Bas Blank analyse the productivity and efficiency of Dutch central government departments, estimating the average cost function based on individual central government departments data during the period 2012-2019 to measure efficiency and technical change.

Sebastian Beer, Mark Griffiths and Alexander Klemm in the article Tax distortions from inflation: What are they? How to deal with them? provide the overview of the most relevant non-neutralities, showing the impact of inflationary gains taxation on effective tax rates, distortions caused by protection against inflation, effect on investment of the depreciation allowances erosion through inflation, etc. 

Mária Murray Svidroňová, Marjan Nikolov, Vesna Garvanlieva Andonova and Alena Kaščáková explore the impact of COVID-19 on participatory budgeting in local self-government units in North Macedonia and Slovakia and identify possible COVID-19-specific and general barriers to such participation in these countries.