Achieving fiscal consolidation without undermining growth and poverty-reduction efforts is a key policy challenge in many countries. Using India as an illustration, this paper shows how a mix of well-designed taxation and spending policies can help address these challenges. On the tax side, the...

This paper reviews income distribution in developing (and transition) countries in recent decades. On average, before-tax income distribution in developing countries is less unequal than in industrial countries. However, unlike industrial countries, developing countries in general have not been...

This paper demonstrates that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty by reducing economic growth, the progressivity of the tax system, the level and effectiveness of social spending, and the formation of human capital, and by perpetuating an unequal distribution of...

This paper constructs an efficiency-adjusted public capital stock series and re-examines the public capital and growth relationship for 52 developing countries. The results show that public capital is a significant contributor to economic growth. Although the estimated coefficient for the income...

This paper estimates the impact of public capital on economic growth for forty-eight OECD and non-OECD countries during 1960 - 2001. Using the production function and its extensions, it finds a positive - but concave - elasticity of output with respect to public capital, which is robust to...