This paper develops and tests a proposed methodology that puts forward a new integrated method for evaluating the performance of development finance institutions. This methodology applies assessment criteria that take into account both the social objective that the development finance...

The Government of China has placed strong emphasis on addressing problems related to agriculture, farmers, and rural society, with the development of a "new socialist countryside" designated as a top priority for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). The financing of public services in rural...

This paper reviews and synthesizes theoretical and empirical research on the role of finance in developing countries. First, the paper presents the stylized facts about firms in developing nations as well as the legal, financial and broader institutional framework in which these firms operate....

Firms often cite financing constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Global capital flows, by bringing in scarce capital, may ease the financing constraints of host country firms. But if incoming foreign investors borrow heavily from domestic banks, foreign direct investment...

This paper surveys fiscal policy in developing countries from the point of view of long-run growth. The first section reviews existing methodologies to estimate the effects of fiscal policy shocks and of systematic fiscal policy, with time series or with cross-sectional methods, and their...

This paper responds to the development policy debate involving the World Bank and the IMF on the use of fiscal policy not only for economic stabilization but also to promote economic growth and increase per capita income. A key issue in this debate relates to the effect of the composition of...

This paper uses a novel loan-level dataset covering lending by official creditors to developing country governments to construct an instrument for public spending that can be used to estimate government spending multipliers. Loans from official creditors (primarily multilateral development banks...

In response to the Great Recession of 2008, many national governments implemented fiscal stimuli packages in 2009 and 2010 to prevent further declines in aggregate demand and to jump start their economic recovery. Where subnational governments responded with fiscal contraction, as in the United...

This report analyzes the distributional impacts of the main taxes and transfers on households' welfare in the West Bank and Gaza. The analysis uses the Commitment to Equity methodology, enabling comparison of the results to other countries where this framework has been applied. The report...

Given Sub-Saharan Africa's enormous resource needs for growth, poverty reduction, and other Millennium Development Goals, the development community has little choice but to continue to explore new sources of financing, innovative private-to-private sector solutions, and public-private...