Book Review: Women in Public Finance
Women in Public Finance is an excellent book. It is an edited volume of 20 chapters that tries to both illuminate the role of women in public finance and discuss the state of gender budgeting.
Global PEFA scores are not improving. Is that a problem?
Trying tomaintain the impression that global “PFM performance” is improving based on selected patterns in the PEFA data is not helping our understanding of PFM dynamics.
When official creditors lend to governments in private debt distress: lessons from African history
Is there anything to learn from Sub-Saharan Africa’s last major debt crisis, which started around 1980, and rapidly engulfed most of the region? Did official creditors effectively take over the debt issued by private creditors, and to what effect?
African Austerity in the 1980s: On the Stubbornness of Fiscal Deficits
Why do governments sometimes run persistent fiscal deficits, financed domestically, despite their self-defeating nature? This article offers some in-the-weeds reflections on fiscal policy in Africa during the structural adjustment era (1980s-90s).
Fiscal Germany scores an own goal
The German government managed to score an unforced own goal when it contrived to oust a respected economics professor from the Council of Economic Experts earlier this month.
Does public finance need goals?
In many LICs and MICs, there are public service problems that are either caused by or worsened by PFM problems that the sector ministry cannot fix and the finance ministry won’t fix. In those cases, the sector ministry is not really a stakeholder in the PFM system. And the finance ministry has, to put it crudely, other things to worry about than to help sector ministries spend more money.
Isn’t it time for fiscal Britain to grow up?
Discussions about budget secrecy are a waste of time at best, and the UK has a lot to learn from fiscal governance in other countries, especially its Westminster peers.
Post: COP30, public finance, and the state
It’s the main event on this year’s climate policy agenda. World leaders (some), policymakers, experts, and advocates (well-nigh all of them) are meeting in Belém this week for COP30, the culmination of Brazil’s COP presidency.
Event: ODI Public Finance Conference 2025
ODI’s Public Finance Conference 2025 is taking place on October 7 & 8 in London.
Event: Reimagining Public Finance Conference
The World Bank is hosting a major conference on “Reimagining Public Finance” at its Washington DC headquarters on September 29-30.