Working Paper
Budgetary Institutions and Fiscal Consolidation in Ghana
To halt the deterioration of their national economy most African governments embarked on IMF and World Bank supported Structural Adjustment Programmes. These programmes have been criticised as neglecting social costs and promoting export-led growth...
Working Paper
A Global Environmental Compact for Sustainable Development
The proposals in this paper derive from studies undertaken at WIDER on questions relating to sustainable development in developing countries. The paper attempts to quantify the resource transfer implications of supporting feasible environment...
Working Paper
Increased Income Inequality in OECD Countries and the Redistributive Impact of the Government Budget
The recent rise in inequality in the distribution of disposable income in many, although not all, countries has led to a search for explanations, particularly since for much of the postwar period falling inequality has been the norm. In OECD...
Working Paper
Clientelistic politics and pro-poor targeting
Past research has provided evidence of clientelistic politics in delivery of programme benefits by local governments, or gram panchayats (GPs), and manipulation of GP programme budgets by legislators and elected officials at upper tiers in West...
Working Paper
The saga and limits of public financial management
At independence in 1975, the Frelimo government took over public administration from the colonial system and started to transform it. The public financial management (PFM) system was adapted to the central planning and management of the economy in...
Book
Democratic Trajectories in Africa
Despite impressive economic growth rates over the last decade, foreign aid still plays a significant role in Africa's political economies.This book asks when, why, and how foreign aid has facilitated, or hindered, democratization in sub-Saharan...
Working Paper
Decomposing budget credibility
Budget reliability is the first pillar of Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA). In this study, we construct an expansion of the PEFA government response accuracy indicator and test its decomposition, with an application to the...
Working Paper
Can New Aid Modalities Handle Politics?
Are recent donor approaches compatible with a political understanding of policy processes in partner or recipient countries? This question is given increased urgency with the recent calls for and commitment to increasing financial flows, scaling-up...
Working Paper
Entitlement, Rules, Coordination, Club, Market and Hierarchy - General Budget Support Practice and Theory
The paper discusses implications for practice and theory of the recently completed Joint Evaluation of General Budget Support 2004-06 based on case studies in Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Uganda and Vietnam. The paper first...
Working Paper
Does a Switch of Budget Regimes Constrain Managerial Discretion?
This study examines the effect of the hardening of the budget constraint on the investment behaviour of Italian state owned enterprises (SOEs). It carries out a natural experiment that exploits the 1987 shift of budget regimes due to the pressure of...