1,720,974 research outputs found
The public sector in the Caribbean : issues and reform options
Full text linkThe public sector's performance in the Caribbean varies, in reducing poverty and in creating an enabling environment for growth. Barbados and the Bahamas have been the high performers, Guyana and the Dominican Republic have been sluggish, and the other Caribbean countries fall in between. In the Caribbean region, the public sector is now the predominant provider of tertiary education and health services (university education and hospital-based curative care), which mainly benefit the nonpoor. Attempts must be made to recover costs from high-income users and use that revenue to improve the quality and quantity (as appropriate) of basic services. Lessons from experience suggest that most Caribbean countries need to encourage the private sector to participate more in providing infrastructure and need to provide a better regulatory framework. The good news: this is already taking place in many countries.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Decentralization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Poverty Assessment,National Governance,Inequality
Public spending and outcomes : does governance matter?
Full text linkThe authors examine the role of governance-measured by level of corruption and quality of bureaucracy-and ask how it affects the relationship between public spending and outcomes. Their main innovation is to see if differences in efficacy of public spending can be explained by quality of governance. The authors find that public health spending lowers child and infantmortality rates in countries with good governance. The results also indicate that as countries improve their governance, public spending on primary education becomes effective in increasing primary education attainment. These findings have important implications for enhancing the development effectiveness of public spending. The lessons are particularly relevant for developing countries, where public spending on education and health is relatively low, and the state of governance is often poor.Health Systems Development&Reform,Public Health Promotion,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Decentralization,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Economics&Finance,National Governance,Governance Indicators,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Sector Economics&Finance
Foreign aid's impact on public spending
Full text linkUsing a model of aid fungibility, the authors examine the relationship between foreign aid and public spending. Based on a panel of cross-country and time-series data, their results show that roughly 75 cents of every dollar given in net development assistance goes to current spending and 25 cents to capital spending in the recipient countries. But concessionary loans - a component of development assistance - stimulate far more government spending. Their results also show that aid increases both public and private investment. To test aid fungibility across both public spending categories, they use a newly constructed data series on the net disbursement of concessionary loans. They find that concessionary loans given to the transport and communication sector are fully nonfungible. But loans to the energy sector are converted into fungible monies and part of the funds leak into transport and communications. Loans to agriculture and education are also fungible. There is no evidence of concessionary funds being diverted for military purposes. Their results show that total public spending in the health sector has no impact on reducing infant mortality, but concessionary loans to the health sector do. This finding leads the authors to conclude that linking foreign aid to an agreed-upon public spending program in areas critical to development might be an effective way to transfer resources to developing countries.Decentralization,Gender and Development,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance,Economic Stabilization
The implications of foreign aid fungibility for development assistance
Full text linkA foreign aid or foreign lending policy that focuses exclusively on project financing may have unintended consequences, report the authors. New research shows that aid intended for crucial social and economic sectors often merely substitutes for spending that recipient governments would have undertaken anyway and the funds that are thereby freed up are spent for other purposes. If the aid funds something that would have been done anyway, traditional ways of evaluating the aid's effectiveness are not really accurate. Ifaid funds are fungible and the recipient's public spending program is unsatisfactory, project lending may not be cost-effective. If the recipient's public spending program is satisfactory, perhaps the donor should finance a portion of it instead of financing individual projects. One solution to the problem of fungibility, then, is that donors could tie assistance to an overall public spending program (in the recipient country) that provides adequate resources to crucial sectors. To make this kind of reform operational, the authors propose a new lending instrument: a public expenditure reform loan (PERL). A PERL would tie an institution's lending strategy to the recipient country's achievement of mutually agreed-upon development goals. Everyone agrees that better donor coordination is needed, but it has been difficult to achieve because some donors tend to prefer projects (usually with the national flag flying over them). By agreeing on a public expenditure program and financing a portion of it, the World Bank credibly ask other donors to do the same.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Gender and Development,Decentralization,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Poverty Assessment,National Governance,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Public Sector Economics&Finance
The public finance of infrastructure : issues and options
Full text linkUsing economic principles, the author provides criteria for financing infrastructure services where consumption-related user charges can be levied effectively. In light of the suggested criteria, the author examines the experience of developing countries in financing publicly provided infrastructure services in transport (road), water, telecommunications, and power. In developing countries, most infrastructure is provided by the public sector, although the private sector has become increasingly involved. Because it is difficult to raise funds through general taxes, self financing of these services remains a desirable second-best policy, one that almost all developing countries endorse. But experience suggests that, except in telecommunications, full cost recovery is more the exception than the rule. Financing remains inadequate. The political economy of tariff setting is an important element in low improperly designed user charges, infrequent adjustments for inflation, and poor enforcement. Such sectors as water, power, and transportation drains funds from the treasury, although their impact varies from sector to sector. When it is difficult to get budget transfers to materialize - especially during a fiscal crisis - there is often a reduction in nonwage operations and maintenance expenditures. As a result, services deteriorate. The private provision of infrastructure services is often suggested as an alternative. The private provision of services can certainly reduce the public sector's financing requirement. For infrastructure services for which technological advances have made competition possible, the market system could ensure efficient private provision of services, which could be a relief to the public sector. But for services that require a single provider to achieve economies of scale and similar benefits, the private provision of services will work only if an appropriate rate of return is assured - and only if user charges cover costs.Urban Economics,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Banks&Banking Reform
World Bank's Experience with Structural Reforms for Growth and Development
No full textThe World Bank Group has come a long way
in supporting structural reforms in its member countries.
The most remarkable feature of its long 35 years and
continuing journey has been its ability to listen, learn and
adjust over time. It learnt relatively quickly that reform
ownership is a necessary requirement for countries to
support and sustain reforms. At the same time, it realized
that reform implementation critically depends on credible
institutions and good governance, which are frequently
missing in its member countries, particularly the low-income
ones. It also noted that over time the structure of reforms
for promoting growth and development evolves, reflecting
both changes in internal country conditions and a changing
global environment. These important realizations are
reflected in the evolution of the World Bank Group’s
policies and practice for supporting structural reforms, and
help sustain a culture of learning from experience
Estudios del gasto publico: logros y posibilidades
No full textThe note reviews the potential of public
expenditure reviews as objective analysis of a
country's public spending issues, and in advancing the
development agenda in the Bank's client countries. It
examines the experiences with these reviews, setting the
approach for improving them, finding that: most public
expenditure reviews define the public sector deficit as the
central government deficit, while relevant macroeconomic
variables are being ignored; those reviews do not examine
the rationale for public intervention, as an analysis on the
efficiency of the public budget allocation; do not integrate
capital, and recurrent expenditures, thus sidesteps the
issue of future recurrent cost implications of the capital
budget, introducing uncertainty regarding the sustainability
of policies, and projects; and, only a minimal percentage of
public expenditure reviews, adequately focus on
institutional issues, such as budget management, or
incentives in the public sector. The note suggests
questioning the exercise of these reviews, as to what will
its performance accomplish, and who should participate in
the review, followed by a focused process, ensuring
ownership, poverty reduction, and information dissemination,
to finally build an analysis based on two complementary
themes: getting policies right, and building
well-functioning institutions to deliver efficient public services
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