This paper assesses the advantages and disadvantages of the French and British public expenditure management systems as used in Africa. The main differences are in budget execution and government accounting. In both francophone and anglophone Africa, there are common weaknesses in the...

This paper investigates budgetary rules for an economy characterized by inflation and volatile relative prices. We view the budgetary process as a limited contingencies contract between the treasury and the ministers. The budgetary process allows a minister, whose realized real budget falls...

Several features of Tanzania''s budget system find their roots in the arrangements inherited from the United Kingdom. These include a legal framework that emphasizes accountability; a cabinet of ministers with strong budget decision-making powers; a parliament with very limited budget powers;...

The Russian federal government has recently initiated a fundamental reform of its budget system, encompassing important policy, procedural, and institutional changes. This paper reviews this reform agenda with reference to the experience of industrial countries that over the past two to three...

The concept of fiscal impulse is defined, discussed, and differentiated from measures that attempt to summarize the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. Two methodologies are briefly discussed and their corresponding measures presented for the G-7 countries over the ten-year period ending in...

This paper discusses in a systematic and comprehensive way the existing literature on the relationship between the growth of countries’ economies and various public finance instruments, such as tax policy, expenditure policy, and overall budgetary policy, from the perspectives of allocative...

Attempting to shed light on the optimal size of government, economists have analyzed planning problems that specify a set of feasible taxation-spending policies and a social welfare function. The analysis characterizes the optimal policy choice of a planner who knows the welfare achieved by each...

One possible explanation for the difficulty in controlling the budget is that a major component of spending --tax expenditures--receives privileged status. It is treated as tax cuts rather than spending. This paper explores the implications of that classification and illustrates how it can lead...

The 2007-2010 recession has imposed significant fiscal hardships on state and local governments. The result has been state deficits and the need to increase state taxes, cut spending, and withdraw funds from state rainy day accounts. The primary cause of state budget "gaps" has been the rise in...

Which budgetary institutions result in efficient provision of public goods? We analyze a model with two parties bargaining over the allocation to a public good each period. Parties place different values on the public good, and these values may change over time. We focus on budgetary...