Public Sector Reform: What Works and Why? An IEG evaluation of World Bank Support

Independent Evaluation Group

No 6484 in World Bank Publications - Books from The World Bank Group

Abstract: The World Bank support for public sector reform has grown notably in recent years. To address the questions of what is working and why in this area, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) has examined Bank lending and other support for public sector reform in four areas: public financial management, administrative and civil service, revenue administration, and anticorruption and transparency. A majority of countries that borrowed to support public sector reform improved their performance in some dimensions, but there were shortcomings in important aspects. Middle-income borrowers saw improvements in their public sector quality more frequently than low-income borrowers, even though the low-income group usually had greater needs for public sector improvement. Performance usually improved for public financial management, tax administration, and transparency, but not for civil service. Direct measures to reduce corruption, such as anticorruption laws and commissions, rarely succeeded, as they often lacked the necessary support from political elites and the judicial system.

Keywords: Public; Sector; Economics; Banks; and; Banking; Reform; Governance-National; Governance; Public; Sector; Expenditure; Policy; Public; Sector; Corruption; and; Anticorruption; Measures; Finance; and; Financial; Sector; Development; Public; Sector; Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8213-7589-1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstreams/fa5 ... bedb124ec6b/download (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbpubs:6484

Access Statistics for this book

More books in World Bank Publications - Books from The World Bank Group 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tal Ayalon ().