The staff report for the Use of Fund Resources—Request for Post-Conflict Emergency Assistance on the Central African Republic (CAR) focuses on the political situation and post-conflict economic recovery. The post-conflict economic recovery remains subdued. Fiscal reforms will focus on...

The staff report for the combined 2005 Article IV Consultation on Burkina Faso focuses on recent economic developments and performance. Burkina Faso has maintained an average real GDP growth rate of more than 6 percent annually, and inflation has been contained. Revenues performance is...

This Selected Issues paper for the Kingdom of the Netherlands—Netherlands underlies recent fiscal developments. Fiscal deterioration during economic slowdowns is not unusual and can be justified on economic grounds. Although the real spending ceilings were largely adhered to, procyclical...

All quantitative and structural performance criteria for end-June 2003 were observed. These positive results reflect several factors, including improved public expenditure management and strengthened revenue administration (offsetting delays in some of this year's new revenue measures),...

This paper examines the merits of the British budget management system that was inherited in Anglophone African countries and which has changed substantially in the United Kingdom since the 1960s. It considers whether the disappointing budgetary performance in Africa is due to weaknesses in the...

This paper assesses changes in the size and scope of government in 24 transition economies. Whereas these governments have retrenched in terms of public expenditures in relation to GDP, as well as public employment as a share of population, some indicators suggest that size remains high (e.g.,...

We define the plutocratic bias as the difference between inflation measured according to the current official CPI and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. We estimate that during the 1990s the plutocratic bias in Spain amounts to 0.055 percent per year. However,...