This paper presents a Joint Staff Advisory Note on the Union of the Comoros’s Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP). The I-PRSP’s macroeconomic framework is broadly in line with the government’s objectives of improving opportunities and living conditions for the...

How does fiscal policy fare in improving the underlying income distribution in Central America? We integrate the data from a number of existing tax and public expenditure studies for the countries in the region and find that the distributional effect of taxation is regressive but small. In...

This paper presents the Joint Staff Assessment of Serbia and Montenegro’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The PRSP for Serbia and Montenegro comprises a union-level overview and a PRSP for each of the two republics. The Montenegrin PRSP is broadly in line with the Agenda of...

This Joint Staff Advisory (JSA) Note examines the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Progress Report for Armenia. Overall, the Progress Report provides evidence of stronger-than-anticipated poverty reduction and economic performance, improvement in the labor market, and a number of other...

This paper assesses how pro-poor and inclusive Asia’s recent growth has been, and what factors have been driving these outcomes. It finds that while poverty has fallen across the region over the last two decades, inequality has increased, dampening the impact of growth on poverty reduction. As...

Using data from three household surveys, we review whether growth in Mauritius was inclusive and discuss the incidence of public expenditures and taxes. Generally, Mauritius enjoys an even income distribution and low rates of poverty. Nevertheless, over the 2000s, despite overall progress, the...