The authors examine the role of governance-measured by level of corruption and quality of bureaucracy-and ask how it affects the relationship between public spending and outcomes. Their main innovation is to see if differences in efficacy of public spending can be explained by quality of...

This paper studies the links between public spending, governance, and outcomes. We examine the role of governance--measured by the level of corruption and the quality of bureaucracy--in determining the efficacy of public spending in improving human development outcomes. Our analysis contributes...

Rajkumar and Swaroop examine the role of governance - measured by level of corruption and quality of bureaucracy - and ask how it affects the relationship between public spending and outcomes. Their main innovation is to see if differences in efficacy of public spending can be explained by...

The public sector's performance in the Caribbean varies, in reducing poverty and in creating an enabling environment for growth. Barbados and the Bahamas have been the high performers, Guyana and the Dominican Republic have been sluggish, and the other Caribbean countries fall in between. In the...

Using a model of aid fungibility, the authors examine the relationship between foreign aid and public spending. Based on a panel of cross-country and time-series data, their results show that roughly 75 cents of every dollar given in net development assistance goes to current spending and 25...

To address the fungibility of foreign aid funds, a proposed new lending instrument - a public expenditure reform loan-would tie an institution's lending strategy to the recipient country's achieving mutually agreed-upon development goals.A foreign aid or foreign lending policy that focuses...

This paper models fiscal effects of foreign aid in a federal system of governance. Our main innovation is to incorporate the inter-governmental fiscal link in examining economic fungibility of foreign aid. The model is applied to the expenditure decisions of the central government of India. The...

The World Bank Group has come a long way in supporting structural reforms in its member countries. The most remarkable feature of its long 35 years and continuing journey has been its ability to listen, learn and adjust over time. It learnt relatively quickly that reform ownership is a necessary...