The World Bank Group has come a long way in supporting structural reforms in its member countries. The most remarkable feature of its long 35 years and continuing journey has been its ability to listen, learn and adjust over time. It learnt relatively quickly that reform ownership is a necessary...

The authors examine the role of governance-measured by level of corruption and quality of bureaucracy-and ask how it affects the relationship between public spending and outcomes. Their main innovation is to see if differences in efficacy of public spending can be explained by quality of...

Rajkumar and Swaroop examine the role of governance - measured by level of corruption and quality of bureaucracy - and ask how it affects the relationship between public spending and outcomes. Their main innovation is to see if differences in efficacy of public spending can be explained by...

The public sector's performance in the Caribbean varies, in reducing poverty and in creating an enabling environment for growth. Barbados and the Bahamas have been the high performers, Guyana and the Dominican Republic have been sluggish, and the other Caribbean countries fall in between. In the...

Using a model of aid fungibility, the authors examine the relationship between foreign aid and public spending. Based on a panel of cross-country and time-series data, their results show that roughly 75 cents of every dollar given in net development assistance goes to current spending and 25...

The authors examine the role of governance-measured by level of corruption and quality of bureaucracy-and ask how it affects the relationship between public spending and outcomes. Their main innovation is to see if differences in efficacy of public spending can be explained by quality of...

The note reviews the potential of public expenditure reviews as objective analysis of a country's public spending issues, and in advancing the development agenda in the Bank's client countries. It examines the experiences with these reviews, setting the approach for improving them, finding that:...

The main objective of this fiscal note is to assist the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) in meeting the challenges mentioned above. To this end, it provides input into the state's rolling medium-term fiscal framework exercise. The new Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) act...