Fiscal policy is critical to the development of poor countries. Public spending on pro-poor services and public goods must be increased, tax revenues must be mobilized, and macro-economic stabilization must be achieved without inhibiting growth, poverty reduction and post-conflict...

Political violence, coup d'état, civil wars and inter-state wars, all have fiscal dimensions (and sometimes fiscal causes). Who gets what — public employment and public spending — and who has to pay for it, are questions that raise fundamental issues about the distribution of society's...

The relationship between an economy's financial sector and the occurrence and resolution of conflict may at first sight appear tenuous. Banking systems, financial regulation and currency arrangements do not appear to be relevant in understanding why nations collapse or why people kill each...