Publication: Scrutinizing Public Expenditures : Assessing the Performance of Public Accounts Committees
Loading...
Published
2005-05
ISSN
Date
2012-06-18
Editor(s)
Abstract
In 2002, David McGee wrote a comprehensive report on two important elements in the system of public financial accountability, namely the office of the Auditor General and the parliamentary oversight committee commonly referred to as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). The purpose of the present paper is to deepen McGee's analysis of PACs. In particular, the authors define PAC success and identify those factors that affect PAC peformance. They use data that were collected by the World Bank Institute in 2002, when a survey questionnaire was sent to 51 national and state/provincial parliaments in Commonwealth countries in Asia and Australasia, and Canada and the United Kingdom. The authors find that the institutional factors which most account for the success of the PACs are the focus on government's financial activity rather than its policies, the power to investigate all past and present government expenses, the power to follow up on government action in response to its recommendations, and its relationship with the Auditors General.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Stapenhurst, Rick; Sahgal, Vinod; Woodley, William; Pelizzo, Riccardo. 2005. Scrutinizing Public Expenditures : Assessing the Performance of Public Accounts Committees. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 3613. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/8244 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Economic Value of Weather Forecasts: A Quantitative Systematic Literature Review(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-10)This study systematically reviews the literature that quantifies the economic benefits of weather observations and forecasts in four weather-dependent economic sectors: agriculture, energy, transport, and disaster-risk management. The review covers 175 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 policy reports. Findings show that the literature is concentrated in high-income countries and most studies use theoretical models, followed by observational and then experimental research designs. Forecast horizons studied, meteorological variables and services, and monetization techniques vary markedly by sector. Estimated benefits even within specific subsectors span several orders of magnitude and broad uncertainty ranges. An econometric meta-analysis suggests that theoretical studies and studies in richer countries tend to report significantly larger values. Barriers that hinder value realization are identified on both the provider and user sides, with inadequate relevance, weak dissemination, and limited ability to act recurring across sectors. Policy reports rely heavily on back-of-the-envelope or recursive benefit-transfer estimates, rather than on the methods and results of the peer-reviewed literature, revealing a science-to-policy gap. These findings suggest substantial socioeconomic potential of hydrometeorological services around the world, but also knowledge gaps that require more valuation studies focusing on low- and middle-income countries, addressing provider- and user-side barriers and employing rigorous empirical valuation methods to complement and validate theoretical models.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Rigging the Scores: Corruption through Scoring Rule Manipulation in Public Procurement Auctions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-12-02)Public procurement is highly susceptible to corruption, especially in developing countries. Although open auctions are widely adopted to curb it, this paper finds that corruption remains prevalent even within this procurement format. Procurement officers can collaborate with firms to manipulate scoring rules, ensuring predetermined winners, while corrupt firms submit noncompetitive bids to meet minimum bidder requirements. Using extensive data from Chinese public procurement auctions, the paper introduces model-driven statistical tools to detect such corruption, identifying a corruption rate of 65 percent. A procurement expert audit survey confirms the tools’ reliability, with a 91 percent probability that experts recognize suspicious scoring rules when flagged. Firm-level analysis reveals that local, state-owned, and less productive firms are favored in corrupt auctions. Lastly, the paper explores policy implications. Analysis of the national anti-corruption campaign since 2012 suggests that general investigations may be insufficient to address deeply ingrained corrupt practices. Using counterfactuals based on an estimated structural model, the paper shows that implementing anonymous call-for-tender evaluations could improve social welfare by 10 percent by eliminating suspicious rules and encouraging broader participation.Publication Labor Demand in the Age of Generative AI: Early Evidence from the U.S. Job Posting Data(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-18)This paper examines the causal impact of generative artificial intelligence on U.S. labor demand using online job posting data. Exploiting ChatGPT’s release in November 2022 as an exogenous shock, the paper applies difference-in-differences and event study designs to estimate the job displacement effects of generative artificial intelligence. The identification strategy compares labor demand for occupations with high versus low artificial intelligence substitution vulnerability following ChatGPT’s launch, conditioning on similar generative artificial intelligence exposure levels to isolate substitution effects from complementary uses. The analysis uses 285 million job postings collected by Lightcast from the first quarter of 2018 to the second quarter of 2025Q2. The findings show that the number of postings for occupations with above-median artificial intelligence substitution scores fell by an average of 12 percent relative to those with below-median scores. The effect increased from 6 percent in the first year after the launch to 18 percent by the third year. Losses were particularly acute for entry-level positions that require neither advanced degrees (18 percent) nor extensive experience (20 percent), as well as those in administrative support (40 percent) and professional services (30 percent). Although generative artificial intelligence generates new occupations and enhances productivity, which may increase labor demand, early evidence suggests that some occupations may be less likely to be complemented by generative artificial intelligence than others.Publication Investment Policy Reforms and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-12-01)Foreign direct investment has the potential to introduce much-needed capital and expertise in emerging and developing economies. To attract foreign direct investment, many countries have eased restrictions on foreign ownership in various sectors, reformed their institutions, and set up investment promotion agencies. Until the mid-2010s, Ethiopia remained one of the few countries that resisted this trend, with several stringent restrictions in place on foreign direct investment entry and operations in the country. This study employs a synthetic control method to examine patterns in foreign capital inflows following a series of investment policy reforms that were substantively introduced in the mid-2010s (circa 2015). The study offers evidence that investment policy reforms contributed to a significant foreign direct investment inflow in Ethiopia, compared to what would have occurred in the absence of these policies. An alternative strategy that conservatively specifies the donor country pool using an AI-assisted deep search technique changes the donor pool weighting matrix of the synthetic control method, but the estimated policy effects largely remain robust to this specification. The findings highlight the importance of targeted reforms in promoting foreign direct investment inflow in developing countries.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Jamaica : Parliamentary Oversight of Public Finances--An Institutional Review(Washington, DC, 2013-06-10)Sound legislative oversight of public finances is crucial to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of public spending. All national governments, and particularly those that are accountable to their citizens through free elections and the voice of civil society, are concerned with the efficiency and efficacy of public finances. More broadly, well-functioning parliaments promote good governance; enhance transparency and accountability, including for public expenditures and their results; widen public discourse on national priorities and options; and build better partnerships between officials and representatives and their electorate. In all this, those among the citizenry with the least have the most to gain. This report responds to a request from the Government of Jamaica to review the structure and capacity of the Parliament of Jamaica to undertake its constitutional role with respect to oversight of the nation's public finances. Jamaica's Parliament is the country's supreme legislative body, consisting of an elected House of Representatives and an appointed Senate (Upper House), as well as the Queen or her representative, as the ceremonial head, and the Governor General. The Government of Jamaica has amended various legislations to adopt a Fiscal Responsibility Framework (FRF). The FRF includes specific fiscal targets as well as provisions to include the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and public service control over expenditures and lending.Publication The Role of Parliaments in Curbing Corruption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)In most countries, Parliament has the constitutional mandate to both oversee government and to hold government to account; often, audit institutions, ombuds and anti-corruption agencies report to parliament, as a means of ensuring both their independence from government and reinforcing parliament's position at the apex of accountability institutions. At the same time, parliaments can also play a key role in promoting accountability, through constituency outreach, public hearings, and parliamentary commissions.Publication Regulatory Capacity Review of Kenya(Washington, DC, 2010)Regulatory reform has emerged as an important policy area in developing countries. For reforms to be beneficial, regulatory regimes need to be transparent, coherent, and comprehensive. They must establish appropriate institutional frameworks and liberalized business regulations; enforce competition policy and law; and open external and internal markets to trade and investment. This report examines the institutional set-up for and use of regulatory policy instruments in Kenya. It is one of five reports prepared on countries in East and Southern Africa (the others are on Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania). The report is based on a review of public documents prepared by the government, donors, and the private sector, and on a limited number of interviews with key institutions and individuals.Publication Legislative Oversight and Budgeting : A World Perspective(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)Effective legislatures are fundamental to promoting good governance and are a critical component in a country's overall governance framework. Although differences exist across government systems, legislatures, through their constitutional mandates, fulfill three core functions: representation, lawmaking, and oversight. Governance goals of greater accountability, transparency, and participation are directly related to these three functions. Legislative oversight in particular seeks to ensure that the executive and its agencies, or those to whom authority is delegated, remain responsive and accountable. This volume looks at oversight as a continuous and ongoing cycle. Legislatures may examine government policies as they are being developed or work to ensure that programs are implemented and administered efficiently, effectively, and in a manner consistent with legislative intent. In addition, this book highlights the important opportunities provided for oversight during the budget cycle. At the same time, the authors recognize the many factors and incentives legislators face that may assist or impede them in playing their oversight role.Publication Strengthening Oversight by Legislatures(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-10)About 90 percent of the world's nearly 200 sovereign states have national legislatures or parliaments. With the spread of democracy and the rise of multiparty political systems, these bodies are playing larger roles in government. Increasingly, legislatures and their members perform four important functions of governance: o Making policies and laws. Legislatures are representative bodies for collective decisionmaking, working with the executive branch to deliberate policies and make laws. Representing citizens. Legislators give voice to individual citizens, civil society organizations, and business groups, representing the needs of local constituents in policymaking. Overseeing the executive. Legislatures oversee policy implementation by the executive branch, scrutinizing its work and holding it accountable. Recruiting future leaders. Legislatures are stepping stones and training grounds for senior positions in the executive branch. Transcending these formal functions, legislatures also provide an arena where competing political forces can debate and reach consensus on national policies and laws. This note addresses the oversight function because of its significance for government transparency and accountability, and because the Bank has initiated pilot projects to support this function.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Vietnam(World Bank, Hanoi, 2020-05-01)Following from Vietnam’s ratification of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in late 2018 and its effectiveness from January 2019, and the European Parliament’s recent approval of the European Union-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and its subsequent planned ratification by the National Assembly in May 2020, Vietnam has further demonstrated its determination to be a modern, competitive, open economy. As the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis has clearly shown, diversified markets and supply chains will be key in the future global context to managing the risk of disruptions in trade and in supply chains due to changing trade relationships, climate change, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks. In those regards, Vietnam is in a stronger position than most countries in the region. The benefits of globalization are increasingly being debated and questioned. However, in the case of Vietnam, the benefits have been clear in terms of high and consistent economic growth and a large reduction in poverty levels. As Vietnam moves to ratify and implement a new generation of free trade agreements (FTAs), such as the CPTPP and EVFTA, it is important to clearly demonstrate, in a transparent manner, the economic gains and distributional impacts (such as sectoral and poverty) from joining these FTAs. In the meantime, it is crucial to highlight the legal gaps that must be addressed to ensure that national laws and regulations are in compliance with Vietnam’s obligations under these FTAs. Readiness to implement this new generation of FTAs at both the national and subnational level is important to ensure that the country maximizes the full economic benefits in terms of trade and investment. This report explores the issues of globalization and the integration of Vietnam into the global economy, particularly through implementation of the EVFTA.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.