This Summary Report describes Afghanistan's Interim National Development Strategy (I-ANDS). It assesses the overall policy objectives, analyzes the context of and constraints to the achievement of those objectives, summarizes the government's key strategies and programs, and also reviews specific steps toward the implementation of the I-ANDS and the development of the full ANDS. It summarizes the government's proposed and ongoing sectoral programs and annual indicators against which progress may be measured. It also reviews the strategic plans developed by government line ministries and commissions.
Another, albeit uncounted, section of the population is involved with the various
stages of trafficking, processing, and marketing of the product, all of which add
more value than cultivation. The proportion of the population that benefits from ...
Mauritania’s poverty reduction strategy paper is based on a broadly participatory process and serves as the policy framework for the country’s economic and social policies. The focus is to accelerate economic growth and stabilize the macroeconomic framework, which benefits the poor, ensure the development of human resources and expansion of basic services, and improve governance and build capacity. In the revision the focus is to strengthen leadership, monitoring, evaluation, and coordination. Mauritania has to take up major challenges to achieve the objectives established at the outset.
... objectives yielded the following achievements: (i) preparation of a management and development plan for small scale and ... fish market is
compliant with prevailing standards; and (xv) improvement of health inspection of
fisheries products.
This paper revisits earlier studies on the determinants of tax amnesties. The novel findings are (i) amnesties are more likely to be declared during fiscal stress periods, and (ii) political factors significantly affect the introduction and timing of amnesties. In particular, the paper empirically disentangles opposite theoretical effects to show that governors perceive amnesties as another revenue source (rather than a tax increase alternative). Finally, supporting evidence shows that by breaking horizontal equity, amnesties might be perceived as unfair: a significant correlation exists between governors who lost their reelection bids and the introduction of a tax amnesty during their election years.
They could therefore blame the governor as being incompetent and not reelect
him/her. In the case where an amnesty is unsuccessful, then the governor's
reputation could also be tarnished by having introduced an unsuccessful
program.
Tax amnesties remain as popular as ever as a tool for raising revenue and increasing tax compliance. International experience, however, shows that the costs of tax amnesty programs often exceed the programs’ benefits. This paper weighs the advantages and disadvantages of tax amnesties, drawing on results from the theoretical literature, econometric evidence, and selected country and U.S. state case studies. The authors conclude that “successful” tax amnesties are the exception rather than the norm. Improvements in tax administration are the essential ingredient in addressing the main problems that tax amnesties seek to address. Indeed, the most successful amnesty programs rely on improving the tax administration’s enforcement capacity. ?Given the potential drawbacks of tax amnesties, a few alternative measures are discussed.
In this section we analyze the recent trends in tax amnesties, and some evidence
is provided regarding their revenue and compliance effects. The first section is
devoted to a review of the econometric literature on the (mainly revenue) effect of
...
We study the smoothing impact of fiscal stabilizers (proxied by government expenditures or revenues) on business cycle volatility for a panel of EU countries in the period 1970-99. The results show that the business cycle volatility smoothing effect of fiscal stabilizers may revert at high levels. We present evidence that for government expenditure ratios exceeding an estimated value of about 38 percent, a further expansion in the size of the government could actually lead to an increase in cyclical volatility. This may call for a reconsideration of the use of fiscal stabilizers for business cycle smoothing.
We study the smoothing impact of fiscal stabilizers (proxied by government expenditures or revenues) on business cycle volatility for a panel of EU countries in the period 1970-99.
This paper analyzes the institutional conditions affecting the establishment and effectiveness of independent central banks and of budgetary institutions. It draws on the recent theory developed by North, Wallis and Weingast on the transition from a closed and fragile state to an open economic and political environment. The paper presents a composite indicator allowing for the identification of a country’s position along this transition path. The findings suggest that (i) while the establishment of autonomous central banks seems to be relatively independent from the broader institutional framework, sound budgetary institutions tend to be established in countries with higher levels of rule of law for the elites, and (ii) while central bank independence is effective in reducing inflation irrespective of a country’s position along the transition path, budget institutions seem to be most effective as a disciplining device in weak institutional environments.
... country' s performance under the rule of law for the elites and under perpetual
organizations is linked to the quality of its BI. B. Econometric Analysis In the first
part of the econometric analysis we ask if a country's performance under the
doorstep conditions determines the quality of its MCI as measured by the CBI and
BI indices. In the second part we analyze whether the fulfillment of the three
doorstep conditions has an effect on the impact of MCI on inflation and public
external debt.
The effectiveness of the monetary policy transmission mechanism in open economies could be impaired if interest rates are driven primarily by global factors, especially during periods of large capital inflows. The main objective of this paper is to assess whether this is true for emerging Asia’s economies. Using a dynamic factor model and a structural vector auto-regression model, we show that long-term interest rates in Asia are indeed predominantly driven by global factors. However, monetary policy transmission mechanism remains effective in the region, as it operates predominantly through short-term interest rates. Nevertheless, the monetary transmission mechanism, though effective, is somewhat weaker in Asia during the periods of surges in capital inflows.
Over the past decade policy makers in Latin America have adopted a number of macroprudential instruments to manage the procyclicality of bank credit dynamics to the private sector and contain systemic risk. Reserve requirements, in particular, have been actively employed. Despite their widespread use, little is known about their effectiveness and how they interact with monetary policy. In this paper, we examine the role of reserve requirements and other macroprudential instruments and report new cross-country evidence on how they influence real private bank credit growth. Our results show that these instruments have a moderate and transitory effect and play a complementary role to monetary policy.
At this point, it is worth clarifying that given the complex structure of reserve
requirements in all countries, we rely exclusively on reserve requirement
changes to identify the policy shock. Thus rather than using an effective rate our
RR measure is based on a simple average of rates (in Brazil of demand and
savings deposits; in Colombia of checking and saving accounts, CD and bonds,
and in Peru the required rate as published by the central bank, see Figure 8).
This simple approach ...
This handbook, edited by Ke-young Chu and Richard Hemming, offers guidance to officials formulating public policy recommendations, so that the aggregate level of public spending conforms with the economy's overall resource capacity. The handbook looks at the impact of public spending on the efficiency of resource use and explores the basis for distinguishing between productive and unproductive spending.
Over many years, staff members of the Fiscal Affairs Department have
undertaken studies on numerous aspects of public expenditure policy. The Public
Expenditure Handbook is the outcome of an effort to bring together the various
strands of these studies and related outside work. Public expenditure issues
have become increasingly important in the context of both stabilization and
structural adjustment programs. Yet rather little systematic guidance is available
on these issues for ...
This paper analyzes trends in social indicators in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and their correlation with the three most widely used scaled measures of government social spending: in per capita terms, as a percentage of GDP, and as a percentage of total government expenditure. On the basis of a regional data set matching health and education outcome indicators with government spending on those sectors, cross-country statistical analysis shows spending both per capita and as a percent of GDP to be of some relevance to social outcomes, but not the share of social spending in budgetary allocations. The policy implications concern not only governments in the region, but also the international donor community for its role in supporting social programs in SSA.
In doing so, it has added to the trend of increasingly explicit social motivation in
international development assistance that emerged in the mid-'| 990s and led to
unprecedented debt forgiveness under the Initiative for the Heavily indebted Poor
Countries (HIPC Initiative) (Camdessus, 1997). Since then, greater priority has
been placed by aid providers on visibly and timely improving social conditions in
recipient countries, while still emphasizing economic growth as indispensable for
...
