Introduction

This issue of Rivista di Politica Economica publishes some of the studies presented at the panel «Public Procurement’s Place in the World: The Charge towards Sustainability and Innovation» held at the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 10-12, 2013. The seven essays in this volume address different issues related to green and innovation procurement as well as more general challenges in public procurement. These studies address both general, abstract problems of optimal public procurement and concrete cases of national or even local public procurement systems.The evidence that they present covers a broad spectrum of countries including Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands and several African countries. Reflecting the different expertise of the authors, the studies draw from the Economics, Engineering, Law and Organization approaches to public procurement and use both theoretical and empirical methods. We divided these studies into three groups on the basis of their main topic area: green procurement, innovation procurement and challenges in public procurement.