Download or read book Public Expenditure in Latin America written by Benedict J. Clements and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2007-02 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines trends in government spending in Latin America from the mid-1990s to 2006. It also examines key policy issues, including the cyclicality of spending, public investment, public employment, and social expenditures. It finds that primary expenditures have trended upward for the past ten years as a share of GDP, driven by increases in current spending, in particular for social expenditures. Fluctuations in real spending have continued to follow a procyclical pattern. The paper finds that there is substantial scope to improve the efficiency of public investment, public employment, and social spending.
Download or read book Public Expenditure in Latin America written by Guy Pierre Pfeffermann and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since public spending is often a crucial component of economic activity in any country, this paper looks at the implications of public spending and its effects on poverty in the Latin American context. Specifically, the paper focuses on two areas. First, because overall economic growth is a necessary condition for long-term poverty reduction, the incidence of public spending on the pace of development is of fundamental importance. Consequently, the paper examines what has been the experience in Latin America during the past fifteen to twenty years and how the state's role in the economy evolved. Second, the paper discusses the social incidence of public expenditures and its effects on poverty. The report indicates that achievement of resumed growth is clearly the goal toward which Latin American governments must be striving if more resources are to be freed for attending to the needs of the poor. However, the report goes on to conclude by saying that the only wise course of action is to consider a reform of government social agencies without further delay, rather than to wait for growth to resume before attacking the social problems of the poor.
Download or read book Better Spending for Better Lives written by Alejandro Izquierdo and published by Inter-American Development Bank. This book was released on 2018-09-16 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can this puzzle of larger demands and fiscal strengthening be solved? This edition of the development in the Americas (DIA) report focuses precisely on this question. The book suggests that the answer is about fiscal efficiency and smart spending rather than the standard solution of across-the-board spending cuts to achieve fiscal sustainability— sometimes at great cost for society. It is about doing more with less. · Analysis of government spending in Latin America and the Caribbean reveals widespread waste and inefficiencies that could be as large as 4.4 percent of the region’s GDP, showing there is ample room to improve basic services without necessarily spending more resources. · The publication argues against across-the-board cuts. It looks at whether countries spend too much or too little on different priorities, whether they invest enough to ensure a better future, and whether those expenditures make inequality better or worse. · Along with the diagnosis, the report offers several policy recommendations on how to improve the efficiency of government spending.
Download or read book Government Spending and Income Distribution in Latin America written by Ricardo Hausmann and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public financial management in Latin America written by Mario Pessoa and published by Inter-American Development Bank. This book was released on 2015-08-24 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of public financial management in Latin America is critical for the supervision of public resources, fiscal stability, and sustainable economic development. In recent years, the countries of Latin America have embraced reforms in public financial management and have made many important advances; however, many challenges remain. This book brings together the knowledge and experiences of IMF and IDB staff and representatives from 16 governments in the region to document these reforms, and examines the experiences and lessons learned. It is a valuable resource for those looking at issues in public financial management.
Download or read book Government at a Glance Latin America and the Caribbean 2020 written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third edition of Government at a Glance Latin America and the Caribbean provides the latest available evidence on public administrations and their performance in the LAC region and compares it to OECD countries. This publication includes indicators on public finances and economics, public employment, centres of government, regulatory governance, open government data, public sector integrity, public procurement and for the first time core government results (e.g. trust, inequality reduction).
Download or read book Fiscal Rules and Economic Size in Latin America and the Caribbean written by Fernando Blanco and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2020-10-10 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the collapse of commodity prices in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in 2014-15, many countries in the region were unable to cushion the impact of the shock in order to experience a more gradual adjustment, to a large extent because they had not built adequate fiscal buffers during the commodities’ windfall from 2010-14. Many LAC countries entered 2020 and the COVID-19 crisis in an even more difficult position, with rising debt and limited fiscal space to smooth the negative impacts of the pandemic and adequately support their economies. Fiscal policy in most LAC countries has been procyclical. Public expenditure and debt levels have expanded in good times and contracted in severe downswings due to insufficient fiscal buffers, making crises deeper. Fiscal rules represent a promising policy option for these and other economies. If well-designed and implemented, they can help build buffers during periods of strong economic performance that will be available during rainy days to smooth economic shocks. This book—which was prepared before the COVID-19 crisis—reviews the performance and implementation of different fiscal rules in the region and world. It provides analytical and practical criteria for policy makers for the design, establishment, and feasible implementation of fiscal rules based on each country's business cycle features, external characteristics, type of shocks faced, initial fiscal conditions, technical and institutional capacities, and political context. While establishing new fiscal rules would not help to attenuate the immediate effects of this pandemic crisis, higher debt levels in the aftermath of COVID-19 will demand rebuilding better and stronger institutional frameworks of fiscal policy in LAC and emerging economies globally. Having stronger fiscal mechanisms that include fiscal rules can help countries prepare for the next crisis and should be on the front burner for policy makers in coming years. The findings and lessons discussed apply to economies of different sizes, with some differences under certain scenarios in terms of the technical design and criteria needed for implementation. In this book, policy makers will find that fiscal rules, if tailored to country characteristics, can work and be an essential fiscal tool for larger and particularly smaller economies.
Download or read book Budget Rigidity in Latin America and the Caribbean written by Santiago Herrera and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2020-04-23 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Policy makers in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) often complain that poor fiscal performance in their countries is a result of a high degree of spending rigidity. Despite being a common complaint, the issue has remained largely ignored by the literature because of the lack of adequate measures of rigidity that allow cross-country and time series comparability. This report helps close this gap by introducing a new measure of spending rigidities that can be easily applied to multiple countries. It focuses on the categories of spending that are naturally inflexible--wages, pensions, transfers to subnational governments, and debt service--and separates them into two components: structural and nonstructural. The structural component is determined by economic, demographic, and institutional fundamentals. The nonstructural component is determined by short-run transitory factors associated with business and political cycles. The degree of rigidity of spending is then proxied by the ratio of structural spending to total spending, with a higher value indicating that spending is driven mostly by factors out of the policy makers’ control. This concept of rigidity was applied to 120 countries for the years 2000†“17 and produced several interesting results: • Advanced economies and developing countries in other regions have higher levels of rigidity than countries in LAC. • The sources of rigidity vary by country. • Higher rigidity is associated with higher spending levels, higher tax rates, higher public debt, and lower efficiency of public spending. • Rigidity has pervasive effects on fiscal sustainability, increasing the country’s financing needs and reducing the probability of the country starting a fiscal adjustment. Given these pervasive effects of spending rigidity, the report concludes by discussing several policies to contain the sources of rigidity in the long term, ranging from the importance of deepening the pension reform process to the need of establishing strong fiscal institutions promoting medium-term fiscal planning.
Download or read book Accountability in Public Expenditures in Latin America and the Caribbean written by Omowunmi Ladipo and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiscal discipline and public sector efficiency became prominent issues in Latin America and the Caribbean in the late 1980's following external debt crises that troubled many countries in the region. Resolution of the debt crises necessitated a first wave of reforms that largely focused on upgrading legal and regulatory frameworks or improving information systems. Nearly twenty years later progress in matching OECD practices and performance in public financial management and procurement has been uneven and has been one of the factors that impeded higher growth and competitiveness in Latin America and the Caribbean. Countries such as Chile, Brazil and Costa Rica with relatively good performance, in this respect, have shown what other countries in the region can do and how they would benefit. Increased globalization, seemingly intractable issues of income inequality, the onset of the recent global financial crises and the emergence of an assertive middle class that demands better governance, are all reasons why Latin America and the Caribbean governments should closely examine incomplete financial management and procurement reform programs and embark on trajectories that will improve their performance and be better responsive to the needs of their citizens. This book sets out, based on more than a decade of World Bank diagnostics, key areas that remain to be addressed by governments in the Latin America and the Caribbean region to underpin sustainable arrangements that deliver efficient and effective services, which are accountable to citizens. Success will have the important additional benefit of serving to notify international financial markets of the integrity of their stewardship function.
Download or read book Health Expenditures in Latin America written by Ramesh Govindaraj and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1995 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Uses econometric techniques to estimate determinants of health expenditures in the region. Also includes useful review of the literature on regional health expenditures. Focuses particularly on estimates of private health care spending, for which data is generally inadequate"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.
Download or read book Government at a Glance Latin America and the Caribbean 2017 written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition of Government at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean provides the latest available data on public administrations in the LAC region and compares it to OECD countries.
Download or read book Why Governments Should Stop Non social Subsidies written by Ramón López and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The provision of public goods and the amelioration of market failure are the classical justifications for government intervention in the economy. In reality, (1) governments intervene in markets that are not affected by failure, and (2) a large share of the government resources is spent in private goods, not in public goods. In contrast to issue 1, issue 2 has received little attention in the literature, in spite of the potentially large efficiency and equity losses arising from misguided allocations of public expenditures. López empirically documents the size of (2) in the rural sector and investigates its consequences for rural development for 10 Latin American countries over the 1985-2000 period. The econometric evidence suggests that the structure of public expenditures is an important factor of economic development in the rural sector, much greater than that of the level of public expenditures and of other factors on which the development literature has traditionally focused. Expanding total public expenditure in rural areas while maintaining the existing public expenditure composition prevailing in certain countries does little to promote agricultural income and reduce rural poverty. Spending a significant share of government resources in (non-social) subsidies causes less agriculture income, induces an excessive reliance of agriculture on land expansion, and reduces the income of the rural poor.
Download or read book Nutrition and Health Programs in Latin America written by Guy Pierre Pfeffermann and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1989 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In most countries, nutrition and health programs are the primary means of raising or maintaining the consumption of basic necessities by the poor. In both areas, a persistent failure of consumption or a lack of timely access to services can have catastrophic consequences. This report examines the targeting of nutrition and health programs to protect the poor in six Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico) during the economic crisis that began at the end of the 1970s and persisted through most of the first half of the 1980s. Food programs come in several varieties: general price supports, school lunch programs, mother-and-infant nutrition supplements, and acute malnutrition treatment programs. The six countries use many different methods to target nutrition programs, and the ones that have the best targeting records also tend to get the best results at the least cost.
Download or read book Toward More Efficient and Effective Public Social Spending in Central America written by Pablo Acosta and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central America has come a long way both in terms of economic and political stability. Increasingly the region is focusing on implementing productivity-enhancing reforms as well as supporting reductions in poverty and inequality. This report analyzes recent trends in public social spending in Central America from 2007 to 2014, conducts international benchmarking, examines measures of the effectiveness and efficiency of social spending, and discusses the quality of selected institutions influencing this spending. We examine total social spending, as well as detailing its four components: public spending on the education, health, and social protection and labor (SPL) sectors. In analyzing public social spending, the report addresses three crucial policy issues: (a) how to improve the coverage and redistributional incidence of public social spending; (b) how to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of public social spending; and (c) how to strengthen the institutions governing public spending in the social sector. While based heavily on a series of recent analytical social spending studies in six countries in the subregion—Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama—this report also takes a broader regional perspective and includes some comparisons to countries in other regions.
Download or read book The Dynamic Effects of Commodity Prices on Fiscal Performance in Latin America written by Leandro Medina and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent boom and bust in commodity prices has raised concerns about the impact of volatile commodity prices on Latin American countries’ fiscal positions. Using a novel quarterly data set-which includes unique country-specific commodity price indices and a comprehensive measure of public expenditures-this paper analyzes the dynamic effects of commodity price fluctuations on fiscal revenues and expenditures for eight commodity-exporting Latin American countries. The results indicate that Latin American countries’ fiscal positions react strongly to shocks to commodity prices, yet there are marked differences across countries. Fiscal variables in Venezuela display the highest sensitivity to commodity price shocks, with expenditures reacting significantly more than revenues. At the other end of the spectrum, in Chile expenditure reacts very little to commodity price fluctuations, and the dynamic responses of its fiscal indicators are very similar to those seen in high-income commodity-exporting countries. This distinct behavior across countries may relate to institutional arrangements, which in some cases include the efficient application of fiscal rules amid political commitment and high standards of transparency.
Download or read book Government Expenditures on Agriculture and Agricultural Growth in Latin America written by Víctor Jorge Elías and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 1985 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growth of agriculture; Government expenditures on agriculture; Determinants of government expenditures on agriculture.
Download or read book Rigidities and Fiscal Space in Latin America written by Oscar Centrángolo and published by United Nations Publications. This book was released on 2010 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paper begins with a conceptual overview and comparative analysis of the cases studied in Latin America. First, there is an analysis and review of the theoretical justifications and arguments used in the political debate which underlies the emergence and persistence of rigidities in countries of the region, following a typology which allows for the classification of the reasons for rigidities. Based on the case studies the potential effects of fiscal rigidities on public budgets and their impact on fiscal-policy management are evaluated. The ultimate goal of this comparative study is to provide a set of recommendations to help guide future improvements in the management of public budgets.
