Public authorities are major consumers in Europe: they spend approximately 2 trillion euros annually. By using their purchasing power to choose goods and services with lower impacts on the environment, they can make an important contribution to sustainable consumption and production....

Recent advances in the scientific understanding of urban traffic congestion have only strengthened the already solid case for congestion charges as an element of a successful urban transport policy. But examples of real-world congestion charging systems remain few and far between. What can be...

High-speed trains can compete successfully with road, air and conventional rail services on densely trafficked routes where willingness to pay is sufficient at the relatively elevated fare levels needed to cover costs. High-speed rail investments can also relieve congestion on the conventional...

This report discusses the state of the art in understanding the economic effects of major transport infrastructure projects. It examines the limits of socio-economic cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and reviews the development of complementary and alternative approaches to assessing the benefits of...

This Public Procurement Brief presents two new EU public procurement Directives (2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU) on procurement by public and utilities sectors. The Directives are part of a recently adopted EU legislative package reforming the EU public procurement rules. The Brief provides an...

The public procurement Directives only apply if a body is a contracting authority (contracting entity in the Utilities sector) within the definition of the Directives. SIGMA Brief 3 gives guidance on the notion of a contracting authority/entity under the directives (especially the concept of...

SIGMA Brief 29 gives a short overview of the issue of common errors in public procurement. For the purposes of the Brief, errors are understood as infringements of public procurement rules and principles, regardless of the stage of the procedure. The Brief analyses the types of errors and their...

his dataset contains annual data on minimum wages in national currency at current prices. Cross-country comparisons are base upon national currency units, pay periods (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly), and time and frequency. Statistics are available from 1960 onwards.

This dataset contains annual data on minimum wages relative to median wages of full-time workers. For cross-country comparisons, data on minimum wage levels are further supplemented with another measure of minimum wages relative to average wages, that is, the ratio of minimum wages to median...