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Bulgaria’s EU Funds Absorption
This paper focuses on EU structural and cohesion funds assistance to Bulgaria during the 2007–13 program period. Initial weaknesses resulted in a low absorption rate, which was mitigated by increasing advance payments; applying electronic application and reporting procedures; simplifying and unifying tender processes; and strengthening the role of international financial institutions and banks in project preparation, evaluation and monitoring. The possible impact on growth and potential output is briefly discussed, while the risks of improper absorption are acknowledged. Valuable lessons have been learned, but it is recommended that additional steps be taken for the next program period 2014–20.
Multiple Dimensions of Human Development Index and Public Social Spending for Sustainable Development
Multidimensional assessment of human development is increasingly recognized as playing an important role in assessing well-being. The focus of analysis is on the indicators measuring the three dimensions of Human Development Index (HDI) — standard of living, education and health, and their relationship with public social spending for achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The study estimates the effects of public social spending on gross national income (GNI) per capita (in PPP in $), expected years of schooling and life expectancy for a sample of 68 countries. The relationship is robust to controlling for a variety of factors and the estimated magnitudes suggest a positive long-run effect of public educational spending on GNI per capita, public educational spending on expected years of schooling, and public health expenditures on life expectancy.
Bulgaria
This is the first public expenditure and institutional review on Bulgaria by the World Bank. The objective of this study is to outline public expenditure issues and policy directions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of pubic expenditures in Bulgaria. It assesses fiscal sustainability and analyzes the efficiency and effectiveness of public expenditures and their institutional framework. Bulgaria has made substantial progress toward long-term macroeconomic stablility. Growth has been re-established, per capita income has improved, inflation has remained low, poverty has been reduced, and the external debt to GDP ratio has declined. Furthermore, the share of the private sector in the economy is increasing, major regulatory reform is underway, the banking sector is on more solid footing, and energy pricing reforms are improving efficiency, and reducing the fiscal burden. But challenges remain in the five sectors looked at - education, health, social protection, the state railways and energy sectors.
Bulgaria
This paper highlights Bulgaria’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) sector and to assess its performance in a regional perspective. A detailed and rich firm-level dataset of state-owned and private firms was compiled for this note to compare key performance indicators of SOEs to private firms in the same sector and to similar firms in Croatia and Romania for a regional comparison. In some network industries, such as energy, SOEs are heavily loss-making. Large amounts of debt have been piled up notably in the energy and transport sectors which, to the extent that it is classified outside the general government accounts, can pose significant risk to public finances in the form of contingent liabilities if the SOEs run into financial difficulties. SOE profitability and resource allocation efficiency largely lag private firms in the same sectors, even when isolating SOEs engaged in competitive market activities and hence classified outside of general government. Coupled with comparably poor output quality, these challenges have the potential to impair competitiveness and productivity across the economy.
The Status of GDP Compilation Practices in 189 Economies and the Relevance for Policy Analysis
This paper examines the status of GDP compilation in 189 economies against six key criteria that describe national accounts compilation practices: whether the benchmark year is up to date, the availability and timeliness of annual and quarterly GDP, whether GDP by production and expenditure approaches are compiled independently to allow for comparisons, whether estimates by the income approach are available, and the vintage of the System of National Accounts (SNA) applied. We used publicly available information including from the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB), and, for 108 developing economies, information provided by the IMF’s real sector advisors stationed in the Fund’s 10 Regional Technical Assistance Centers (RTACs). The data were compared with the UNSD and World Bank databases. We find that 50 percent of economies have acceptable benchmark years, 72 percent report timely annual GDP data, while 55 percent of economies report timely data for quarterly GDP. The study presents some conclusions for priorities of capacity development.
Financial Crises, Macroeconomic Shocks, and the Government Balance Sheet: A Panel Analysis
Government financial assets are increasingly recognized as playing an important role in assessing fiscal sustainability. However, very little research has been done on the dynamics of government financial assets compared to liabilities. In this paper, we investigate the impact of recent financial crises and macroeconomic shocks on government balance sheets, decomposing the separate effects on financial assets and liabilities. Using quarterly Government Finance Statistics (GFS) data, we analyze a panel of 27 countries over the period 1999Q1-2017Q1 through fixed effects and panel VAR techniques. Financial crises are shown to deteriorate the net financial worth of governments, but no significant impact is found on assets suggesting that they are not being used as fiscal buffers in bad times. On the contrary, countries that suffered both financial and banking crises experienced an “artificial” increase of their asset position through bank bailouts. Macroeconomic shock analyses reveal that government balance sheet items are countercyclical, but important asymmetries are found in their dynamics.
IMF Research Bulletin, March 2014
The Research Summaries in the March 2014 Research Bulletin focus on efficiency of health expenditure (Francesco Grigoli and Javier Kapsoli) and employment growth in European Union countries (Bas B. Bakker and Li Zeng). The Q&A article looks at “Seven Questions on Financial Interconnectedness” (Co-Pierre Georg and Camelia Minoiu). The Research Bulletin also includes a listing of IMF Working Papers, Staff Discussion Notes, and Recommended Readings from the IMF Bookstore. Information on the IMF Economic Review—the research journal of the IMF—is also provided.
Bulgaria
This is the first public expenditure and institutional review on Bulgaria by the World Bank. The objective of this study is to outline public expenditure issues and policy directions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of pubic expenditures in Bulgaria. It assesses fiscal sustainability and analyzes the efficiency and effectiveness of public expenditures and their institutional framework. Bulgaria has made substantial progress toward long-term macroeconomic stablility. Growth has been re-established, per capita income has improved, inflation has remained low, poverty has been reduced, and the external debt to GDP ratio has declined. Furthermore, the share of the private sector in the economy is increasing, major regulatory reform is underway, the banking sector is on more solid footing, and energy pricing reforms are improving efficiency, and reducing the fiscal burden. But challenges remain in the five sectors looked at - education, health, social protection, the state railways and energy sectors.
Public Sector Balance Sheet Database: Overview and Guide for Compilers and Users
This paper provides an overview of the Public Sector Balance Sheet (PSBS) Database, a dataset developed in the context of the October 2018 Fiscal Monitor. The dataset provides a comprehensive picture of public wealth for 38 countries, and a narrower picture for further 37 countries and territories. Comprehensive PSBSs bring together all the accumulated assets and liabilities that governments control, including public corporations, natural resources, and pension liabilities. They therefore account for the entirety of what the state owns and owes, offering a broader fiscal picture beyond debt and deficits. This is particularly relevant in the current context of record and still rising debts an...
The European Union, the World Bank and the Policymaking of Aid
Based on the experience of the author, an IPE scholar and former trade policy consultant at the World Bank (WB), the book offers an in-depth exploration of the EU–WB relations, conceptualized as hybrid delegation. Coupling cross-time analyses of their interaction in the regions of the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa with an original investigation on the coordination among the EU member states at the Executive Board of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development over the ‘voice and participation reform’ of 2008–2010, the book advances an innovative theoretical framework to assess the EU–WB joint institutional and field polic...
