Background: Unlike other financial services, technology-driven changes in the insurance industry have not been a vastly explored topic in scholarly literature. Incumbent insurance companies have hitherto been holding their positions using the complexity of the product, heavy regulation, and gigantic balance sheets as paramount factors for a relatively slow digitalization and technological transformation. However, new technologies such as car telematic devices have been creating a new insurance ecosystem. The aim of this study is to assess the telematics technology acceptance for insurance purposes. Methods: The study is based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). By interviewing 502 new car buyers, we tested the factors that affect the potential usage of telematic devices for insurance purposes. Results: The results indicate that facilitating conditions are the main predictor of telematics use. Moreover, privacy concerns related to the potential abuse of driving behavior data play an important role in technology acceptance. Conclusions: Although novel insurance technologies are mainly presented as user-driven, users (drivers and insurance buyers) are often neglected as an active party in the development of such technologies.

Public procurements have been high on the agenda of policy makers, decision makers, scholars, and other interested parties in Europe in the last few decades, as such procurements make up nearly one-fifth of Europe’s total gross domestic product. Nevertheless, not many attempts have been made to measure the efficiency of public procurement systems and accordingly rank European countries. The most important measurement that highlights this issue is the Single Market Scoreboard for Public Procurements. However, this scoreboard is subject to bias and numerous omissions, which significantly decreases its operational usage and deteriorates the real efficiency of public procurements. This article aims to rank European countries in an unambiguous, objective, and impartial manner by using the Composite I-distance Indicator (CIDI) methodology. Instead of using biased weights for individual indicators, assigned by experts, the CIDI method creates new weights in an objective manner. The study analysed 30 European countries. The results of the study are, to some extent, different from current practice for public procurement efficiency measurement. The novel approach to ranking provides an opportunity to interested parties to improve the performance of their public procurements by reviewing them on a multidimensional basis.

Public procurements are accounted for nearly one fifth of Gross Domestic Product in the European Union. Accordingly, the efficiency of public procurements has received immense attention of scholars and practitioners in the last few decades, particularly in the field of measuring a cross-country efficiency among the EU Member States. Nevertheless, the extant matrix is based solely on the outputs, thus capturing only a portion of determinants affecting the efficiency. Up to date, very little has been done in comparing the input-output efficiency. This paper aims to develop a set of input and output determinants of public procurement efficiency and compare the efficiency of public procurements of EU Member States. The results indicate that the efficiency based on input-output analysis significantly differs from any current analysis of procurement efficiency.

The e-government has been profoundly changing the expectations of citizens towards local governments worldwide. Policyholders in Serbia have been very active proponents of the implementation of novel e-services in local governments. However, the capacities for full implementation of e-governments are still humble. This paper reports on findings from the study on transparency and online visibility, responsiveness to e-mails, and interactivity of local governments, especially with regard to financial inquires. The study used a multi-step methodology to examine the proactive, reactive and interactive transparency of 169 local governments in Serbia. The results indicate that local governments are relatively transparent, but responsiveness and interactivity are far below expectations.

The performance of tax administrations (TAs) is usually described as their capacity to complete activities with the minimum of resources engaged. Accordingly, tax administration performance is a multifaceted phenomenon, and measuring and benchmarking its performance against other countries or regions remains a puzzle for researchers and practitioners. This paper introduces a new approach for measuring tax administration performance using the Composite I-Distance Indicator (CIDI) based on 11 individual performance measures from 35 European tax administrations over two consecutive years (2018–2019). For the given scores of tax administrations, we conducted a correlation analysis with (a) tax evasion loss and (b) the fiscal deficit of countries in which these tax administrations operate, aiming to assess the strength of the statistical relationship between these variables. The study highlights Denmark and the Netherlands as exemplary models for tax administration, with “Revenue Collection” being identified as a crucial driver of excellence and “Operational Performance” (such as “e-filing” and “on-time filing”) forming critical aspects of TA efficiency. Also, the study finds a negative correlation between tax avoidance and tax administration performance.

Failure of public services has been a vividly debated topic in both theory and practice of public administration. Surprisingly, only a handful of scholarly papers have empirically examined the failure management practices and provided any useful tools and techniques for managing the failure. The aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which central government administration manages the failure and how it affects the quality of their services. The study collected 568 responses from the political appointees and career civil servants across a wide range of ministries and central government agencies in the Republic of Serbia. The results indicate that the analysis of failure plays a pivotal role in the learning process and ultimately leads to the improvement of public service quality.