Search results

This paper sets out to provide an introduction to two sets of questions, and to some relevant literature that has tried to answer them. The first set of questions concern what determines growth in low-income countries, and how the answers are conditioned by the history of fiscal policy design (public capital, debt and deficit management, for example). The second (related) set of questions concerns how to design fiscal policy in face of future uncertainties over climate change, structural change, and the evolution of aid flows. The paper is intended to ask questions, rather than answer them, but at least to provide some structure within which to do this.

In 1991, the new Government of Ethiopia faced a triple fiscal challenge. First, a major effort was required to overhaul and modernize the tax system. Second, the need to switch expenditure from military to civilian uses had to take place within a potentially severely reduced resource total. The severity of the general financing problem was however ameliorated by a rise in aid flows. Third, there was the political imperative to press on with the process of fiscal decentralization that was the necessary accompaniment to political decentralization. The present government has, for the most part, been quite impressive in macroeconomic policy, fiscal reform and public expenditure management. It has embarked on a radical decentralization programme and an ambitious civil service reform. Its record on privatization has been mixed, and privatization has proceeded at a much slower pace than elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

Effective public investment requires governments to address the ""recurrent cost problem"" to ensure operations and maintenance (O&M) expenditures are sufficient to sustain the flow of productive public capital services to private factors of production. Building on the model of Buffie et al (2012), this paper explores the macroeconomic implications of this recurrent cost problem and its resolution in a context that recognizes that taxation is distortionary. The model is also usedto examine stylized fiscal reforms including the replacement of a distortionary output tax with auniform consumption

When a natural disaster destroys public capital, these direct losses are exacerbated by indirect losses arising from reduced output while reconstruction takes place. These indirect losses may be much larger, relative to the direct ones, in low-income countries, because they lack the finance for rapid reconstruction. This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model to examine sovereign disaster risk insurance, increased taxation, and budget reallocation as alternative financing mechanisms for countries where increased borrowing is impractical. The analysis suggests that insurance may or may not be helpful, depending on detailed circumstances, and that budget reallocation is potentially very damaging. Raised taxation, if feasible, may be an attractive option.

This paper focuses on the impact of disasters on public expenditures, and how this impact might be valued. The impact may involve changes in the composition of spending, concurrently and over time. It may also involve changes in the level of spending and the profile of this over time. In the latter case, the associated financing must also be taken into account. The changes of interest are those that would take place under a given sovereign disaster risk financing and insurance strategy, as opposed to what would take place otherwise. The paper concludes with some suggestions toward an operational framework for addressing these questions.