The Pan-European Region made significant progress from 1995 to 2007 in improving the economic, social, environmental and health indicators incorporated into the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, given the huge set-backs associated with the transition recession in the early 1990s and...

We evaluate the direct employment effect of the public investment in key infrastructure—electricity, roads, schools and hospitals, and water and sanitation. Using rich firm-level panel data from 41 countries over 19 years, we estimate that US$1 million of public spending in infrastructure...

Spending on public administration itself is relatively low and so are indicators of its performance. Challenges include wastage in public procurement, insufficient management of the investment cycle and high levels of staff turnover. This paper considers ways of building on recent reforms,...

While it is indisputable that performance measurement has become a centerpiece of governance in the late 20th and early 21st century, it is unclear in many cases if “performance” implies the same concept across cultures and countries. A variety of definitions of performance are in use among...

This paper has adopted the exploratory case study method of analyzing a few recent cases of public procurement irregularities on Indian Railways documented by the vigilance departments and the CAG available in public domain to inquire into the following issues: (a) how do irregularities and...

This paper recounts how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic at executing its core public health mission of readiness and response. The paper then evaluates the current state of the agency’s workforce and organizational culture, noting a...

This article aims at illustrating a theoretical approach to the analysis of the dynamics of productivity in the public sector, and at presenting a preliminary application of it to the estimation of the impact on productivity of the recent development of e-Government processes in a number of OECD...

This study discusses some of the factors that potential investors look at when trying to determine whether to invest in a particular country. The focus is on eleven countries in Southeastern Europe. Statistics from the 2003 Index of Economic Freedom for these eleven countries are examined from...

Ireland's economic development since the late 1980s has been remarkable: From languishing at the bottom of the EU to one of the top spots in income capita. It is thus not strange that the Irish "miracle" has attracted much attention among the New Member States in Eastern Europe. Some...

Structural explanation of political development offers a finite set of factors that cause democracy to consolidate or not (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2006). This approach is, however, insufficient to explain political development of post-communist countries because it ignores a role of social...