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)...

Kosovo has embarked on a journey of digital transformation, developing digital infrastructure to provide access to households, companies, and educational institutions and modernizing its public finance system through GovTech. Digitalization and GovTech can facilitate Kosovo leapfrogging into...

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 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 medium-term budget projection for 2025 to 2029 indicates a persistently high need for fiscal consolidation in Austria's public finances. If the consolidation measures announced by mid-April remain unchanged, the general government deficit would remain close to 4 percent of GDP throughout the...

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...

This report has been drawn up in accordance with Article 63 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1727 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 November 2018 on the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) (henceforth, "Eurojust Regulation" or "EJR"), replacing and repealing Council...

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...

The UK government is consulting on significant reforms to how funding from central government is allocated between English councils. From 2026-27, there will be a new system for allocating funding between councils, which will take account of new official assessments of councils' spending needs...

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...

This article reviews a rapidly growing literature on how climatic risks and events affect public finances around the world. This literature includes empirical evaluations of how past climatic events have affected fiscal outcomes, empirical and model-based assessments of how climatic risks affect...

With an outstandingly long data set of Swiss cantonal public finances, we study whether this Swiss subnational level runs sustainable fiscal policies. Going back to the year 1905, we test for stationarity of cantonal public debt, revenue and spending and for cointegration between cantonal...

The assistance assessed how climate change impacts and mitigation and adaptation responses are addressed in the public investment cycle using the Climate Module of the Public Investment Management Assessment (C-PIMA). The assistance also evaluated the scope to advance Green Public Financial...

Uganda has committed to an ambitious climate change mitigation and adaption agenda. To achieve this, the country has developed a sound framework to enhance climate change sensitivity across public financial and public investment management. The framework clearly allocates responsibilities,...

This paper investigates the impact of population ageing on the economic and fiscal performance of Finland, a small open economy, which has undergone a rapid and significant demographic shift since 2010. By employing the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) to create a counterfactual scenario without...

This report has been drawn up in accordance with Article 63 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1727 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 November 2018 on the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) (henceforth, "Eurojust Regulation" or "EJR"), replacing and repealing Council...

The UK finds itself in an unfortunate economic and fiscal bind. Living standards have endured an unprecedentedly long stagnation. Taxes are at record levels for the UK (though remain lowto-middling by European standards). Public services are showing visible signs of strain and are, in many...

Deutschland benötigt bis 2030 zusätzliche öffentliche Ausgaben in Höhe von 782 Mrd. Euro für die Modernisierung. Bislang fehlt der deutschen Politik dafür ein verlässlicher Finanzierungsrahmen; diskutiert werden stets eine grundlegende Reform der Schuldenbremse oder Einsparungen. Beide...

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...

Gender budgeting is a public financial management (PFM) tool, used to ensure accountability mechanisms. The analysis of "process" indicators of gender-responsive PFM (GRPFM) reveals that India has been successful in integrating a gender lens within the budget cycle, including in the financial...

English councils saw big cuts to their funding during the 2010s, with spending on some services down between 40% and 70% over the decade. And although like virtually all public services, funding for local government was increased during the 2019-24 parliament, councils' finances are still under...

Like spending on the NHS, and schools, English council funding has increased over the current parliament. But that follows a decade of austerity in the 2010s. And despite funding increases, councils are again under significant financial pressure, with increases in spending outpacing revenues and...

The current generation of pensioners has, in general, been better served by the UK's mix of state and private pension provision than earlier generations were. Pensioners today have disposable incomes - once you take account of housing costs and children - that on average are similar to those...