Tanzania began serious efforts at reform more than twenty years ago, but the payoff to these – in macroeconomic stability, increased revenue and a rising revenue share – only gathered pace in the last decade. It is vital that the impact on these achievements of the global economic and...

This paper examines the relation between fiscal deficits and growth for a panel of 45 developing countries. Based on a consistent treatment of the government budget constraint, it finds evidence of a threshold effect at a level of the deficit around 1.5% of GDP. While there appears to be a...

For many low-income countries, there has been an extended period in which fiscal policy was not a choice, or was a choice made by authorities external to the country. For a number of them, this situation is now changing. Their own success in stabilising the economy, coupled with a shift in the...