As part of its mandate, the IMF seeks to create the conditions necessary for sustained high-quality growth, which encompasses a broad range of elements. These include sound macroeconomic policies, growth-enhancing structural reforms, good governance, and such social policies as cost-effective...

There is little empirical evidence to support the claim that public spending improves education and health indicators. This paper uses cross-sectional data for 50 developing and transition countries to show that expenditure allocations within the two social sectors improve both access to and...

Cross-country data on the distribution of health indicators by income classes are rare. Several methods for estimating disaggregated data have been proposed. The method of decomposing average health indicators for the population as a whole into averages for the poor and nonpoor using a random...

The reform of fiscal policies and institutions lies at the heart of structural adjustment in developing countries. Although the immediate aim of such reform is to reduce fiscal imbalances to achieve macroeconomic stability, the long-term goal is to secure more durable improvements in fiscal...

This paper estimates the impact of public spending on the poor's health status in over 70 countries. It provides evidence that the poor have significantly worse health status than the rich and that they are more favorably affected by public spending on health care. An important new result is...