The scope for increasing public spending to meet Bulgaria’s development needs is limited by low revenue. Increasing the efficiency of spending is, therefore, crucial. This paper discusses how this can be achieved in four areas (public investment, social protection, health, and education). The...

How do countries mobilize large tax revenue-defined as an average increase in the tax-to-GDP ratio of 0.5 percent per year over three years or more? To answer this question, we build a novel dataset covering 55 episodes of large tax revenue mobilization in low-income countries and emerging...

How can Low-Income Countries (LICs) enhance tax revenue collection to finance their vast development needs? We address this question by analyzing seven tax reform experiences in LICs (Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Maldives, Mauritania, Rwanda, Senegal, and Uganda). Three lessons stand out, although...

This paper examines the relative effectiveness of the use of indirect and direct monetary policy instruments in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, by estimating a restricted Vector Autoregressive model with Exogenous Variables (VARX). The study assumes that the central bank conducts...

Managing resource revenues is a critical policy issue for small open resource-rich countries. This paper uses an open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to analyze the transmission of resource price shocks and a shock to resource production in the Trinidad and Tobago economy....

Empirical investigation of the factors underlying the growing usage of crypto-assets is in its infancy, owing to data limitations. In this paper, we present a simple cross-country analysis drawing on recently released survey-based data. We explore the correlation of crypto-asset usage with...

High persistence of state fragility (a fragility trap) suggests the presence of substantial benefits from avoiding a fall into fragility and considerable hurdles to successful exit from fragility. This paper empirically examines the factors that affect the turning points of entering and exiting...