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...