Ghana's development path, although registering past successes, faces a series of current and future challenges. Ghana succeeded inhalving its poverty rate between 1991 and 2016, from 87 percent (US$3.65 per day in 2017 purchasing power parity [PPP]) to about 50 percent of the population,...

Eswatini's fundamental policy challenge is to address the longstanding factors that have constrained growth and hindered broad-based improvements in living standards. Given the state's significant role in the economy, the build-up of macro imbalances, and slow improvements in social indicators,...

The Subnational public finance report is the first in a series of World Bank reports that analyze local and regional government fiscal and financial developments in Croatia. The objective of this work is to offer policy advice on improving public service delivery in a fiscally efficient and...

How can Zimbabwe create the necessary fiscal space to absorb quasi-fiscal expenditures, reverse its upward trend in public debt, and support macroeconomic stability? Zimbabwe is faced with an unsustainable and growing stock of public debt. To service this debt, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)...

This Public Finance Review (PFR) is the first since 2013, and it complements other World Bank Group advisory support and analytics. The PFR updates the fiscal analysis with data from 2013 through 2023 and expands into areas not previously covered, such as revenues, fiscal risks, and...

The connection between public spending and the ambitions of urban elites is a common topic in the historiography of the late Middle Ages. However, it is still unclear how city finances and private capital interacted before the use of sophisticated financial systems of the late 13 th to early 14...

Cabo Verde has long been a story of economic success, but growth decelerated in the last decade and has become more volatile - with implications for fiscal performance. Economic growth and social indicators improved significantly after the country's independence from Portugal in 1975, driven by...

This background note provides more detail on the key findings for the health sector from the forthcoming World Bank 2025 Mongolia Public Finance Review. It is intended for policymakers and practitioners who are interested to know more about the efficiency of health spending in Mongolia. It can...

During the last decade Cambodia succeeded in achieving significant domestic resource mobilization which in turn enabled a rapid expansion of social spending. During the next decade it should shift from spending more to spending better. This Public Finance Review (PFR) informs the next phase of...

Incentivizing innovation through buyouts may alleviate the social costs associated with patent power, but the political economy and feasibility of this potentially important financing mechanism have been understudied. We study an international setting of countries with different innovation and...

How much did France pay for its colonial empire? Did colonies benefit from large transfers from French taxpayers and private investors, or were they on the contrary drained of their capital? So far, Jacques Marseille (1984) was the only attempt to investigate these questions, by deducting from...

In this essay, I argue that Christophers' description of asset-manager society is best characterized by a logic of 'acquire and extract'. I build on his insights to delve into the less-explored world of emancipatory alternatives. I argue for radical transformations - what I term 'democratic...

Armenia has made significant progress in its development journey by improving its ability towithstand shocks and becoming an upper-middle-income country in 2018. Armenia's GDP per capita more than doubled between 2017 and 2023, to USD 8,053 (current prices) despite several shocks including the...

In this paper, we discuss the balance sheet mechanics of the Swedish government. We examine spending, government bond purchases, and tax payments. As long as the Swedish central bank, which is created through Swedish laws, supports the Swedish central government, it cannot run out of money. The...

This note shows that the Italian Mini BOTs proposed in 2019 bore the potential neither to become Italian legal tender nor to practically increase Italian government debt, but to practically cause a mere reduction in taxation and thence in government spending or transfers. Since the Eurozone...

Developments over the past few years, which include the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent polycrisis, conflict in several of Cameroon's regions, and fiscal consolidation, have left Cameroon in an extremely tight fiscal situation. The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent polycrisis have had averse...

This paper explores the Taxation system in the Republic of Kosovo. It researches the need and reasons for the optimal taxation system that the Republic of Kosovo should develop as part of the proposed Taxation reform (based on recommendation). The Republic of Kosovo is the newest country in...

In a paper delivered at the December 1955 meeting of the Econometric Society, Paul Samuelson noted that though economists had done "work of high quality and great quantity in the field of taxation," the theory of public expenditure had been "relatively neglected" (1958, 332). Anglo-American...

This section of the Public Finance Review (PFR) assesses the level, quality, efficiency, and equity of public spending on education in North Macedonia and recommends policies that could increase efficiency as well as outcomes. It also examines the status of recent education reforms in the...

We study how regulation limiting ESG policies distorts financial market outcomes. In 2021 Texas enacted laws that prohibit municipalities from contracting with banks with certain ESG policies, leading to the exit of five of the largest municipal bond underwriters from the state. Issuers...

Easing their access to capital markets, governments have been establishing a primary dealer system. Via bilateral self-enforcing agreements ('dealerships'), government debt management units (DMUs) have been appointing national and global banks (the 'dealers') to actively participate in...

Bulgaria has traditionally adhered to fiscal discipline and prudent fiscal policy since the introduction of its currency board arrangement in mid-1997. After a gradual decline in the 2000s, public debt has remained among the lowest in the European Union (EU), hovering in a narrow band between 17...

The transfer elasticity of income tax rates is an important parameter in public finance. Given the significant fiscal autonomy of Swiss municipalities, Switzerland is an ideal setting for examining behavioral responses to tax policy. Using a regression kink design, we find robust causal evidence...

This volume presents the first systematic review of public bank lending in the water sector in the Global South. Many public banks have an explicit mandate to finance public water management, yet despite a resurgence of interest in public banks and the role they can play in sustainable...

At just under £8 billion, spending on schools and childcare is the second-largest area of public service spending in Scotland, behind spending on health. While councils rather than the Scottish Government itself determine how much to spend on schools, they do so in the context of a funding and...

This report analyses the Scottish Government's Budget for 2025-26, with chapters on tax strategy, school spending, public sector pay and more.

Dealing with the consequences of climate change will put an increasing burden on public and private finances. We use the example of floods in a survey experiment among 8,000 German households to elicit households' preferences for climate adaptation policies. In Germany, as in many countries, we...

In the early 2020s sharp surge of inflation, unprecedentedly high levels of government debt and deficits fueled attention for the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL). This theoretical framework for fiscally induced inflation is well-known and controversially discussed. However, empirical...