The paper examines empirically the question of whether more unequal societies spend more on income redistribution than their more egalitarian counterparts. Theoretical arguments on this issue are inconclusive. The political economy literature suggests that redistributive spending is higher in...

Government spending plays a critical role in protecting and enforcing rights and civil liberties. Empirical evidence for a sample of industrial and developing countries shows that government expenditures on defense, law and order, social security, education, and health care are associated with...

This notification summarizes the outcome of consultations with Washington-based representatives of participants in the General Arrangements to Borrow (GAB) on a possible renewal of the GAB decision. By way of background, the GAB was established in 1962 and is a standing agreement between the...

Background. The case for sovereign state-contingent debt instruments (SCDIs) as a countercyclical and risk-sharing tool has been around for some time and remains appealing; but take-up has been limited. Earlier staff work had advocated the use of growth-indexed bonds in emerging markets and...

This paper analyzes the factors determining the payment on outstanding debt in the presence of partial defaults, and the feasibility of renewed investment. We show that a higher relative size of sectors with lower substitutability between domestic and foreign products will increase the resource...