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Author: William Easterly
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Accounting
Languages : en
Pages : 38
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Book Description
Abstract: Fiscal adjustment becomes like walking up the down escalator when growth-promoting spending is cut so much as to lower growth and thus the present value of future tax revenues to a degree that more than offsets the improvement in the cash deficit. Although short-term cash flows matter, a preponderant focus on them encourages governments to invest too little. Cash flow targets also encourage governments to shift investment spending off budget, by seeking private investment in public projects-irrespective of its real fiscal or economic benefits. To evade the action of cash flow targets, some have suggested excluding from their scope certain investments (such as those undertaken by public enterprises deemed commercial or financed by multilaterals). These stopgap remedies might sometimes help protect investment, but they do not provide a satisfactory solution to the underlying problem. Governments can more effectively reduce the biases created by the focus on short-term cash flows by developing indicators of the long-term fiscal effects of their decisions, including accounting and economic measures of net worth, and where appropriate including such measures in fiscal targets or even fiscal rules, replacing the exclusive focus on liquidity and debt.
Author: William Easterly
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Accounting
Languages : en
Pages : 38
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Book Description
Abstract: Fiscal adjustment becomes like walking up the down escalator when growth-promoting spending is cut so much as to lower growth and thus the present value of future tax revenues to a degree that more than offsets the improvement in the cash deficit. Although short-term cash flows matter, a preponderant focus on them encourages governments to invest too little. Cash flow targets also encourage governments to shift investment spending off budget, by seeking private investment in public projects-irrespective of its real fiscal or economic benefits. To evade the action of cash flow targets, some have suggested excluding from their scope certain investments (such as those undertaken by public enterprises deemed commercial or financed by multilaterals). These stopgap remedies might sometimes help protect investment, but they do not provide a satisfactory solution to the underlying problem. Governments can more effectively reduce the biases created by the focus on short-term cash flows by developing indicators of the long-term fiscal effects of their decisions, including accounting and economic measures of net worth, and where appropriate including such measures in fiscal targets or even fiscal rules, replacing the exclusive focus on liquidity and debt.
Author: Luis Serven
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
Solvency is an intertemporal concept, relating to the present value of revenues and expenditures, and encompassing both assets and liabilities. But the standard practice among policy makers, financial market participants and international financial institutions is to assess the strength of the fiscal accounts solely on the basis of the cash deficit. Short-term cash flows matter, but a preponderant focus on them can encourage governments to invest too little, especially during episodes of fiscal tightening. This has potentially adverse consequences for growth and, paradoxically, even for fiscal solvency itself. The paper offers an overview of the links between fiscal targets, public investment, and public sector solvency. After reviewing the international experience with public investment under fiscal adjustment, the paper lays out an analytical framework to illustrate the consequences of using the public deficit as a guide to solvency. The paper then discusses some alternatives to conventional cash deficit rules and their implications for investment and fiscal solvency.
Author: Mr.Chris Papageorgiou
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1455217891
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 46
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Book Description
This paper introduces a new index that captures the institutional environment underpinning public investment management across four different stages: project appraisal, selection, implementation, and evaluation. Covering 71 countries, including 40 low-income countries, the index allows for benchmarking across regions and country groups and for nuanced policy-relevant analysis and identification of specific areas where reform efforts could be prioritized. Potential research venues are outlined.
Author: Anand Rajaram
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 146480317X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 203
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Book Description
Public resources, if invested well in public infrastructure and services, can unleash inclusive growth and development. This report provides a simple but comprehensive framework and global experience, to help policy makers adopt good functional principles in the design of institutions to strengthen public investment management.
Author: Guillermo E. Perry
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821370858
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
Fiscal policy in Latin America has been guided primarily by short-term liquidity targets whose observance was taken as the main exponent of fiscal prudence, with attention focused almost exclusively on the levels of public debt and the cash deficit. Very little attention was paid to the effects of fiscal policy on growth and on macroeconomic volatility over the cycle. Important issues such as the composition of public expenditures (and its effects on growth), the ability of fiscal policy to stabilize cyclical fluctuations, and the currency composition of public debt were largely neglected. As a result, fiscal policy has often amplified cyclical volatility and dampened growth. 'Fiscal Policy, Stabilization, and Growth' explores the conduct of fiscal policy in Latin America and its consequences for macroeconomic stability and long-term growth. In particular, the book highlights the procyclical and anti-investment biases embedded in the region's fiscal policies, explores their causes and macroeconomic consequences, and asesses their possible solutions.
Author: Blanca Moreno-Dodson
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821396315
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
The effects of fiscal policy measures, both taxes and public spending, adopted by developing countries in response to the 2009 global crisis are still uncertain. This book discusses them using an analytical framework that allows for distilling possible implications on growth and social welfare.
Author: Alexander Huurdeman
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 146481385X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Petroleum discovery in a country presents its policy makers with a challenging and complex task: formulating and agreeing on policies that will shape the country’s petroleum sector and guide the translation of the newly discovered resources into equitable and sustainable economic and social growth for the nation over the long term. Balancing Petroleum Policy provides policy makers and other stakeholders with the basic sector-related knowledge they need to embark on this task. It introduces a number of topics: the petroleum value chain and pivotal factors affecting value creation, a consultative process for developing a nation’s common vision on key petroleum development objectives, design of a legislative and contractual framework, petroleum fiscal regimes and their administration, prudent fiscal management, transparency and governance, environmental and social safeguards, and economic diversification through industrial linkages. Although much of the material is relevant to designing policies for the development of the petroleum sector in general, the book gives special focus to developing countries, countries in a federal or devolved setting, and countries that have experienced or are still experiencing civil conflict. With this focus in mind, the book examines three questions—ownership, management, and revenue sharing of petroleum resources—that are central to petroleum policy in any federal or devolved state. It also offers important perspectives on how to prevent violent conflicts related to such resources. Petroleum policies tend to vary significantly from country to country, as do the objectives that such policies aim to achieve in the specific context of each particular country. Although there is no one-size-fits-all policy and there are no clear-cut answers to the many potential policy dilemmas associated with the discovery of petroleum resources, this publication may help policy makers find the right balance among the chosen objectives—and the right policy choices to achieve these objectives.
Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 145520952X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 29
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Book Description
This paper focuses on post-crisis fiscal priorities in the ASEAN-5 economies - Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Sound economic fundamentals and timely and forceful policy responses to the crisis, including fiscal stimulus, contributed to rapid economic recovery in the ASEAN-5. As growth rebounds, these economies are beginning to identify, communicate and implement their strategies for unwinding the fiscal stimulus while addressing long-term growth challenges. In this context, the paper highlights the need for fiscal policies to address infrastructure gaps, stimulate private consumption and expand social safety nets. Creating fiscal space to address these challenges will require raising revenues and reorienting public spending rather than increasing borrowing. Supporting structural reforms, aiming to stimulate private infrastructure investment, could help address long-term growth challenges, while easing the burden on fiscal policy.
Author: Célestin Monga
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199687110
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 865
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Book Description
For a long time, economic research on Africa was not seen as a profitable venture intellectually or professionally-few researchers in top-ranked institutions around the world chose to become experts in the field. This was understandable: the reputation of Africa-centered economic research was not enhanced by the well-known limitations of economic data across the continent. Moreover, development economics itself was not always fashionable, and the broader discipline of economics has had its ups and downs, and has been undergoing a major identity crisis because it failed to predict the Great Recession. Times have changed: many leading researchers-including a few Nobel laureates-have taken the subject of Africa and economics seriously enough to devote their expertise and creativity to it. They have been amply rewarded: the richness, complexities, and subtleties of African societies, civilizations, rationalities, and ways of living, have helped renew the humanities and the social sciences-and economics in particular-to the point that the continent has become the next major intellectual frontier to researchers from around the world. In collecting some of the most authoritative statements about the science of economics and its concepts in the African context, this handbook (the first of two volumes) opens up the diverse acuity of commentary on exciting topics, and in the process challenges and stimulates the quest for knowledge. Wide-ranging in its scope, themes, language, and approaches, this volume explores, examines, and assesses economic thinking on Africa, and Africa's contribution to the discipline. The editors bring a set of powerful resources to this endeavor, most notably a team of internationally-renowned economists whose diverse viewpoints are complemented by the perspectives of philosophers, political scientists, and anthropologists. The set of analyses and reflections presented here try to endow each subject with depth and discovery.
Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821374060
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
This pocket-sized reference on key environmental data for over 200 countries includes key indicators on agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, energy, emission and pollution, and water and sanitation. The volume helps establish a sound base of information to help set priorities and measure progress toward environmental sustainability goals.
