Browse by: "2006"

In recent years a greater demand for strengthening the role of the legislature in the budget process has become evident worldwide: more than a quarter of countries have revised their constitutions over the last 15 years to give Parliament more powers. In particular, several African countries are experiencing pressure to increase the legislature’s role in the preparatory stage of the budget process and as a check on the executive. This article argues that there are risks in allowing greater parliamentary activism, but that a greater risk is associated with marginalising the role of Parliament in the budget process. The article sets out options for designing a role for Parliament that allows it sufficient oversight, while managing the risks of ill-disciplined parliamentary action leading to excess spending or of Parliament becoming a conduit for narrow, ineffective spending demands.

Market Exchange Rates (MER) balance the demand and supply for international currencies, while Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) exchange rates capture the differences between the cost of a given bundle of goods and services in different countries. When undertaking multi-country analysis of environmental issues (such as climate change) that includes different currencies, a decision has to be made as to whether to use PPP or MER in the analytical framework. The distinction between them is particularly germane in inter-temporal studies that postulate future scenarios. PPPs are generally favoured for their closer link to welfare, but MERS are necessarily the basis of international trade, so it is difficult to choose between them. Some authors have noted some empirical regularity between them and have sought to exploit this to avoid choosing between PPP and MER. In this paper, it is shown that such ad hoc adjustments are not necessary when structural changes are accounted for.

This paper aims to identify the Belgian business cycle and forecast GDP growth based on a large data base of short-term conjunctural indicators. The data base consists of 509 indicators containing information on surveys of Belgium and its neighbouring countries, macroeconomic variables and some worldwide watched indicators such as the US ISM and OECD confidence indicators. The statistical framework used is the One-Sided Generalized Dynamic Factor Model developed by Forni, Hallin, Lippi and Reichlin (2003). The model reduces the variables to their core business cycle information, defined as the part of variation of the variables common to the data set. Well-known indicators such as the EC economic sentiment indicator and the NBB overall synthetic curve contain a high amount of business cycle information. Furthermore, the richness of the model allows to determine the cyclical properties of the series and to forecast GDP growth all within the same unified setting. We classify the variables into leading, lagging and coincident with respect to a reference business cycle defined as the common variation contained in quarter-on-quarter GDP growth. 22% of the variables are found to be leading. Amongst the most leading variables we find asset prices and international confidence indicators such as the ISM and some OECD indicators. In general, national business confidence surveys are found to be coincident, while consumer confidence seems to lag. Although the model captures the dynamic common variation contained in the data set, forecasts based on that information are insufficient to deliver a good proxy for GDP growth given a non-negligible idiosyncratic part in GDP's variance. Lastly, we explore the dependence of the model's results on the data set and show through a data reduction process that the idiosyncratic part of GDP growth can be dramatically reduced. However, this does not improve the forecasts.

This paper provides a review of the literature relating to empirical studies of the acreage and/or production response to the direct payments made to US farmers of wheat, feed grains, cotton and rice under the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 and related payments made under additional legislation during the period 1999-2002.

Trade facilitation reforms in developing countries can have an important impact on development and poverty reduction. Reduced costs due to shortened border delays, streamlined food supply chains, longer agricultural supply seasons, enhanced government revenue, improved governance and increased foreign direct investment have all been shown to accompany trade facilitation reforms in developing countries.

This Review of Technical Assistance and Capacity Building Initiatives for Trade Facilitation (“Review”) aims to strengthen the design, delivery and evaluation of development assistance programmes undertaken by donors in this important area of development cooperation. It provides an overview of past technical assistance and capacity building for trade facilitation and highlights key lessons learned.

Hourly labour productivity, along with average hours worked, the employment rate and the working-age population as a share of the total population, is one of the accounting aggregates that determine per capita GDP. Yet according to many analyses, hourly labour productivity in several European countries is much the same as or even higher than in the United States, while per capita GDP is markedly lower (see Cette 2004, 2005 for a summary of this work).

The main purpose of this workshop was to take the first steps in considering whether the general approaches which have been used in the past by the Working Group, primarily to address the safety/ risk assessment of transgenic plants, could be applicable to similar work on the safety/ risk assessment of transgenic fish.The objective of the workshop was to identify and review the kinds of (and availability of) baseline information of (non-transgenic) from traditional fish farming or breeding, and to determine what information might be relevant to risk/ safety assessment; and what information might be needed for the development of a biology document. The overall approach used by the Workshop was similar to that done to first identify and circumscribe the issues about crop species that would inform a risk/safety assessment of the same species after it had been transformed.

Accountability is now acknowledged as an important element in good governance in the public sector. The term itself is complex, covering many aspects including: the move from accounting to accountability; the need to increase transparency; the importance of the political interface; the distinction between internal and external accountability; the use of accountability information; the interaction of accountability systems with other systems to affect programme results; and more.

In Denmark, nearly all public services for individuals and families are delegated to local authorities, resulting in high quality and flexible delivery. The financing of these services is mostly ensured by tax revenues determined by the individual local authority but linked to the central government income tax. Local accountability in this regard has recently been called into question. Although local borrowing is strictly controlled, the system of grants and equalisation does not give incentives for cost efficiency in local government. Other accountability instruments (matching grants, general grants, the long tradition of negotiations) are analysed in light of their impact on control.

This article provides an overview of different accountability and control issues in public spending. In a decentralised environment, public spending needs  ome degree of fiscal discipline, favourable institutional relationships, a stable negotiation framework, management co-operation, permanent and transparent reporting, and reliable and co-operative control structures across levels of government. The article discusses elements such as the role of the supreme audit institution in external and legislative control, the creation of audit committees to reinforce internal control, the use of performance contracts between ministries and agencies to ensure accountability and the search for efficiency, the use of third-party providers in public service delivery (including publicprivate partnerships) and the implications for government monitoring and control, and the use of performance information and programme evaluation.

This report records the position of the WPDD on the safety of decommissioning and the task for providing a decommissioning safety case. Guidance is already available, both internationally and nationally [1,2,3] on the detailed technical, management and administrative requirements for the decommissioning of nuclear facilities. Such guidance tends currently to focus on radiological aspects, reflecting its development from the safety case for the operational phase. The decommissioning phase, however, introduces some wider issues, or at least a change of emphasis on existing issues, and it is against this background that the WPDD started to review the key points that need to be addressed specifically for decommissioning safety and to consider whether there is sufficient guidance for the increased level of decommissioning activity expected over the next decade or so.

This article describes the Hungarian Parliamentary Decision on Construction of a Low/Intermediate-level Waste Repository and on the Lifetime Extension of Paks NPP (2005).

The nine countries represented in the 2004 post-seminar resource book are at the forefront of the African budget reform experience. This introductory article draws on these case studies to view the milestones achieved and some of the lessons learnt, both on the content of reforms and on how they could be sequenced and managed. It also draws on the proceedings of the three-day seminar on budget reform in Africa held in December 2004 that not only offer a wider experience base, but also provide a summary of the more significant lessons learnt from the combined experience. These lessons are the core of this article: they are presented as ten key budget reform principles which emerged from the seminar discussions, and are highlighted with examples from the case studies and further discussion of key seminar concepts.