In member states of the European Union, the current VAT treatment of activities of public authorities creates significant distortions in their decisionmaking between public provision and contracting out of public services. In several EU-member states, a refund of VAT to local governments...

A high level of public services in housing, transport, education and health care is essential for liveability in urban centres, as shown in this report, with the help of European data for large cities. Inhabitants of larger cities, where the housing market is heavily commercialised in terms of...

This paper introduces a theory-based equivalence scale for public in-kind transfers, which justifies comparison of distributions of extended income (cash income plus the value of public services) between European countries. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed equivalence scale in an...

The objective of this paper is to examine the efficiency of the public sector when it comes to labor market policy (LMP) in European Union (EU) countries. The primary aim is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of public services connected with the LMP from the viewpoint of the efficiency of...