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)...

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...

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...

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...

This paper investigates fiscal sustainability and the prevailing fiscal regime in the Federal Republic of Germany. Using annual data from 1950 to 2023, the long-term relationship between the primary balance and government debt is estimated using a single-equation error correction model (SECM)....

Conventional macroeconomics has viewed inflation as a monetary phenomenon through the Quantity Theory of Money. Ever-increasing sovereign debt globally has caused concern among economists. These concerns follow not from the ability of governments to repay their debt, but rather from the impact...

The research employs Bayesian Vector Autoregressions with hierarchical priors to analyze the intricate economic implications of fiscal policy shocks on inflation, monetary policy, and fiscal authorities in the context of South Africa. The study explores data spanning from 1979 to 2022. Contrary...

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...

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...

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we wish to better explain the relationship between Sargent and Wallace's (1981) unpleasant monetarist arithmetic, the closely connected fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL), and the monetarist view of inflation. Second, we discuss how the recent...

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 paper studies price stability and debt sustainability when the real rate exceeds trend growth (r g) in a New Keynesian model with endogenous technology growth through R&D. Endogenous growth constitutes a self-financing mechanism for deficits which backs debt and attenuates fiscal...

Economists and sociologists recognize taxation as an important element of the life of individuals. As the tax system and policies of each country reflect the characteristics of the country's social, political, cultural and economic structure, tax systems differ according to the characteristics...

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...

Research has gained in importance at universities of applied sciences in recent years. However, a lack of suitable doctoral opportunities for their own graduates can be observed. When looking for university partners for cooperative doctorates, graduates of university of applied sciences continue...

We develop a new class of general equilibrium models with partially unfunded debt to propose a fiscal theory of persistent inflation. In response to business cycle shocks, the monetary authority controls inflation, and the fiscal authority stabilizes debt. However, the central bank accommodates...

We study a model in which policy aims at aggregate price stability. A fiscal imbalance materializes that, if uncorrected, must cause inflation, but the imbalance may get corrected in the future with some probability. By maintaining price stability in the near term, monetary policy can buy time...

Economists have become very influential intellectuals in our contemporary society. The scientific knowledge produced by the discipline and the academic status of economists can be considered as a decisive power resource in media debates and politics. The current state of economics has been...

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...

"In this examination of labor unions and state employee pensions, political scientist Carolyn Abott examines the increasing tendency of state governments to act with fiscal abandon as they create policy, despite the relatively constrained nature of their fiscal resources. She finds that...

This paper posits an information channel as the explanation for sudden inflations. Consumers saving via nominal government bonds face a choice whether to acquire costly information about future government surpluses. They trade off the cost of acquiring information about the surpluses that back...

Why are we seeing inflation? The government dropped about $5 trillion in people's bank accounts, a classic fiscal helicopter drop. Why did this one produce inflation? People do not believe this debt will be repaid. Will inflation continue? Whether we see a one-time price-level increase or...