Researchers and assistants from the Institute of Public Finance took part in several international conferences at the end of September where they presented their papers, exchanged experiences with colleagues, and explored new opportunities for collaboration.

Ivica Urban and Slavko Bezeredi, as members of the Croatian national team, participated in the EUROMOD annual meeting and the Research Workshop 2025, held at the School of Economics and Business in Ljubljana. The annual meeting gathered researchers involved in the development and maintenance of EUROMOD, while the workshop featured twelve scientific papers and a roundtable discussion on the effective design of child benefits. At the annual meeting, Urban gave a presentation EUROMOD vs. MODPOD: a comparison of personal income tax expenditures, in which he compared results on tax expenditures obtained using EUROMOD and MODPOD – the personal income tax and social contributions microsimulation model developed by the Institute of Public Finance.

At the CEE-Loc: Local Government Studies in Central and Eastern Europe conference, held at Corvinus University of Budapest, Branko Stanić presented his paper Does local ownership matter? Evaluating the efficiency of waste management provision in a fragmented local government system. The paper analyses the impact of municipal ownership on the efficiency of waste collection in Croatia. Findings show that outsourced providers are, on average, more efficient than municipally owned companies, although managerial and institutional factors play a key role.

At the same conference, Romario Marijanović presented his paper Analysis of cost, system and overall efficiency of general hospitals in Croatia. The results showed that most hospitals are recording a decline in overall efficiency, while by adopting the best practices of more efficient hospitals they could reduce monetary resources input by 7-16% and the use of intermediate outputs (number of treatment days, bed occupancy, and number of services provided) by 20-32% – without compromising health outcomes.
The conference brought together researchers and experts in multilevel governance, local development, and public policy in Central and Eastern Europe.

Luka Draganić participated in the 29th Young Statisticians Meeting, held in Basovizza, Italy. As an invited speaker, he presented a working paper Effects of natural disasters on public debt sustainability in Croatia, which analyses the fiscal response capacity to a hypothetical earthquake that would shock the Croatian economy in 2025. The paper highlights the complex relationship between natural disasters and fiscal sustainability, emphasising the importance of including such risks in standard debt sustainability analyses.
The conference brought together young researchers and experts in both applied and theoretical statistics.