Welfare economics, scope and performance of government, externalities, public goods, cost-benefit analysis, subsidies economize on spending without losing effectiveness by modifying the conceptual framework guiding state expenditures. The familiar framework says that state intervention is...

This paper looks at the empirical record whether big infrastructure and public capital drives have succeeded in accelerating economic growth in low-income countries. It looks at big long-lasting drives in public capital spending, as these were arguably clear and exogenous policy decisions. On...

This paper presents the DIGNAR (Debt, Investment, Growth, and Natural Resources) model, which can be used to analyze the debt sustainability and macroeconomic effects of public investment plans in resource-abundant developing countries. DIGNAR is a dynamic, stochastic model of a small open...

Effective public investment requires governments to address the "recurrent cost problem" to ensure operations and maintenance (O&M) expenditures are sufficient to sustain the flow of productive public capital services to private factors of production. Building on the model of Buffie et al...

Senegal's fiscal deficit and public debt have been on the rise in recent years owing partly to an ailing and inefficient oil-based energy sector. In this paper we use a two-sector, open-economy, dynamic general equilibrium model to investigate the effects of varying fiscal policy instruments one...

Rwanda is a unique case among its Sub-Saharan African peers in that it has already undergone a large scaling-up of public investment. The Rwandan government has made clear its desire to lower its reliance on foreign aid while still maintaining high public investment levels. We use the model of...

This paper studies the fiscal implications for the Beninese economy of scaling up of public investment when the government is subject to inefficiencies on the spending and on the tax collection side. While scaling up of public investments results in higher long-run output and consumption levels,...

The paper notes that the development of sound budgetary institutions in countries such as France, the U.K. and the U.S. has taken a very long time?200 years or more?and is still evolving. It discusses Douglass North's prediction?which is supported by available data?that institutional reform is...

This paper reviews economic developments in the United States during 1992–96. The paper briefly describes improvements in the national income and product accounts (NIPA) and some of their implications for the analysis of long-term trends in U.S. investment and saving. The paper highlights...

This report focuses on IMF Technical Assistance Evaluation—Public Expenditure Management (PEM) Reform in Selected African Countries. Most of the countries examined were colonies of the United Kingdom, inheriting similar and relatively simple budget systems based on an interpretation of...