Public Spending and Outcomes Does Governance Matter?

bl ic Di sc lo su re A ut ho riz ed Pu bl ic Di sc lo su re A ut ho riz ed Pu bl ic Di sc lo su re A ut ho riz ed Pu bl ic Di sc lo su re A ut ho riz ed I POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 2840 Rajkumar and Swaroop examine the role of governance, public spending on primary education governance-measured by level of corruption and quality becomes effective in increasing primary education of bureaucracy-and ask how it affects the relationship attainment. These findings have important implications between public spending and outcomes. Their main for enhancing the development effectiveness of public innovation is to see if differences in efficacy of public spending. The lessons are particularly relevant for spending can be explained by quality of governance. The developing countries, where public spending on authors find that public health spending lowers child and education and health is relatively low, and the state of infant mortality rates in countries with good governance. governance is often poor. The results also indicate that as countries improve their This paper-a product of Public Services, Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in the group to better understand issues relating to effective service delivery. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 181