Bhutan has evolved from a closed economy to a trading nation that exhibits a high degree of dependence on trade. Exports have grown rapidly but overall the country’s trade deficit continues to widen owing to an even faster growth in the value of imports. The manufacturing and industry...

This strategic paper discusses Ethiopia’s growth and transformation plan (GTP) for the periods 2010/2011 and 2014/2015. The Ethiopian government’s main development agenda has been poverty eradication. The government has designed, and is implementing, strategies, policies, and plans...

This paper uses a simple model to analyze the forces that determine the size of the public sector and the quality of workers employed in that sector. Workers are heterogeneous, and the public sector chooses an employment strategy that maximizes a social welfare function U(s, Y) that depends on...

This paper argues that the development of human capital in the public sector should be an important ingredient in any proposed set of “second-generation” reforms for Africa. In the post-colonial era the quality of governance has seriously declined, and the stock of human capital in the...

Increasing public debt vulnerabilities in low-income developing countries (LIDCs) have heightened the need for fuller and more transparent accounting of public sector debt (PSD). The framework for reporting on public sector debt is sound. But there is room for LIDCs to further improve their...

This paper pursues several objectives. First, it presents a sketch of a positive (or real-world) theory of public sector intervention. Second, it analyzes in some detail the activity of the public sector in nine market economies of developing Asia and relates this activity to the growth of the...

This paper examines the Annual Progress Report (APR) on Rwanda’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The 2004 APR is an important progress marker in Rwanda’s long-term vision to reduce the proportion of Rwandans living below the poverty line from 60 percent to 25 percent and...

Despite the continued vulnerability of the economy to exogenous shocks, the inadequacy of infrastructure, and the weakness of existing institutional capacity, there has been considerable progress in actions and reforms initiated by the government within the framework of the poverty reduction...

The implementation of the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Framework (GPRSF) first describes the characteristics of poverty in Burundi before proceeding to review progress made in terms of each strategic axis. The analysis of macroeconomic performance, including the real sector, inflation,...