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...

Government intervention to correct market failures is often accompanied by government failures and corruption. This is no more evident than in social sectors that are characterized by significant market failures and government intervention. However, the impact of corruption on the public...

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 examines the revenue response to inflows of foreign aid in 107 countries during the period 1970–2000, In particular, it investigates whether the impact of aid on the revenue effort depends on the composition of aid (grants vis-à-vis loans). The results indicate that while...