In Morocco, the increasing public expenditure on essential sectors, such as education, does not always lead to improved outcomes, highlighting a significant gap between resource allocation and quality enhancement. This study examines the efficiency of public expenditure in education, health, and...

This paper empirically investigates the short- and long-term impact of public expenditure on economic growth. We use annual data from 28 European Union (EU) countries for the 1995-2022 period and estimate a growth model augmented for public expenditure employing the Autoregressive Distributed...

I investigate the social costs imposed by poor implementation of public infrastructure. Focusing on the period from 2005 to 2015 in Peru, when the government embarked on a nationwide initiative to expand sewerage systems, I leverage quasi-random variation in initiation of the implementation...

We perform a Meta-Regression Analysis (MRA) of the literature on government size and corruption, examining 450 empirical estimates retrieved from 44 primary papers published from 1998 to 2022. We find considerable heterogeneity in the results, mainly depending on whether the paper is published...

This paper examines the distributional effects of fiscal policy in Grenada. Using data from the 2017-2018 Living Conditions and Household Budgets Survey and following the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) analysis framework, we estimate the effects of fiscal policy interventions on inequality and...

We examine the relationship between public sector efficiency and government spending, to assess public resource management across the 27 European Union countries. Specifically, we analyze the growth of public expenditure in relation to outcomes across various public sector performance (PSP)...

The main goal of the first-generation expenditure rules was to ensure fiscal discipline: preserving a sound fiscal framework and public debt sustainability. Regarding this goal, analytically as well as empirically, limiting the share of public expenditure in GDP would be more appropriate in case...

This report examines Madagascar’s public agricultural expenditure from 2013 to 2022 and incorporates recent policy changes as of mid-2024. Its findings and recommendations aim to help the government allocate scarce public resources more effectively for better targeting and outcomes. The study...

We assessed whether health spending of local government units in the Philippines is sufficient to deliver mandated primary health care (PHC) services under a devolved system, how PHC spending varies with fiscal capacity, and whether increased intergovernmental transfers following the...

We provide experimental evidence on how fiscal news shapes households' expectations and spending behavior. Using a new survey of ~11,000 Korean individuals linked to automatically collected high-frequency spending data, we elicit respondents' fiscal and macroeconomic beliefs and randomly provide...

Environmental challenges increasingly shape political discourses across Europe, yet their influence on actual environmental governance remains unclear. This paper examines the political economy mechanisms linking environmental change, party platforms, and the decentralisation of environmental...

The purpose of this note is to help mainstream fiscal multipliers in PFRs. It aims to provide guidance for estimating fiscal multipliers in developing countries by leveraging the World Bank’s macroeconomic and fiscal model (MFMod) to generate country-specific estimates. While other methods are...

The objective of the assessment is to take stock of the performance of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR’s) public finance management (PFM) system, assess progress since the 2018 Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessment, and inform the development of the Lao...

The Public Finance Review (PFR) for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) aims to support policymakers in strengthening medium-term fiscal frameworks and aligning fiscal policy with sustainable and inclusive growth. Against the backdrop of BiH’s highly decentralized governance structure, heightened...

This public sector pay mission scoped the available data and presents an indicative baseline and scenarios for reform. There is limited room for major increases in personnel spending and careful prioritization is needed. If implemented in 2025, adjustments to pension benefits, expanded military...

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of fiscal consolidations in sub-Saharan Africa using a newly constructed narrative dataset of discretionary fiscal policy actions for 14 countries over 1990–2024. The dataset, documented in Abdel-Latif et. al. (2025), identifies fiscal measures...

This paper assesses the fiscal and distributional effects of personal income tax expenditures in Portugal using EUROMOD and 2022 EU-SILC microdata. We compare the 2023 tax-benefit system with a counterfactual scenario in which tax expenditures are removed to estimate first-round impacts. We find...

The Scottish Budget and Spending Review published on 13 January set detailed spending plans for 2026-27, alongside higher-level plans for the following two years for day-to-day (resource) spending and the following three years for investment (capital) spending. Understandably, the Scottish...

The funding available to a government determines the choices available to it - including what public services and benefits to provide, whether to charge co-payments for services, and if so at what level. Such choices especially affect households on low and middle incomes, and particularly those...

The central contention of this report is that the UK fiscal framework has some desirable features but is not delivering good outcomes. We are in a bad equilibrium. The UK's fiscal framework is based around a set of pass-fail, numerical fiscal rules. The fiscal debate is overly fixated on the...

This paper investigates how external shocks propagate through fiscal transmission mechanisms in a commodity-dependent economy within a dynamic macroeconomic framework. The study contributes to the literature on macroeconomic fluctuations by examining the interaction between external revenue...

In this paper, we analyze the impacts of financial innovation and financial deepening on the economic growth of 14 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1995 to 2023. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and error correction model (ECM) were used to assess short- and long-run...

This paper examines the effect of women’s political empowerment on public spending efficiency in developing countries. Using a large panel of 126 developing countries over 1995–2021, the paper constructs public spending efficiency scores based on Stochastic Frontier Analysis, capturing...

Despite Niger’s relatively high public spending on agriculture compared to regional peers, the impact on sector productivity and growth has been limited and uneven. This report, an agricultural public expenditure review combined with an analysis of price incentives for crop and livestock...

Attaining education sustainability is indeed important as it ensures the overall economic sustainability of countries and it is directly connected with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-4). However, the literature evidence on the determinants of education sustainability is...

The social impact of sanitation is multifaceted. It has repercussions for health, education, and the local environment, as well as overall human development and economic growth. Unsafe sanitation poses environmental and health risks. In light of the health hazards, the Government of India has...