Infrastructure bottlenecks have been identified as a key obstacle to growth affecting productivity and market efficiency, and hindering domestic integration and export performance. This paper assesses the state of Brazil's infrastructure, in light of past investment trends and various quality...

An equalization system ensures that subnational governments can provide similar level of public services at a comparable level of own tax-effort. This paper focuses on the importance of spending needs factors in the design of equalization transfers as well as special purpose transfers-and the...

There is increasing interest in fiscal decentralization in Peru as a mechanism to generate more involved decision-making at the subnational level. This is tempered with a continuing emphasis on overall fiscal stability. However, considerable work needs to be undertaken to define more clearly...

This paper discusses the short- and medium-term fiscal implications of government wage bill spending. Working with a sample of 137 advanced, emerging and low-income countries, we use a panel VAR approach to identify differences in the dynamic behavior of revenues, nonwage expenditures, and the...