With the deadline for achieving the 2016 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) less than a decade away, the slow and uneven progress is raising important questions about the ability of the international community to 'scale up' its efforts to finance the goals. Securing adequate financing for development has thus become the most pressing issue of the development agenda.This groundbreaking volume, by leading development economists and practitioners, addresses the central concern for policymakers involved in long term planning for the MDGs: how to create 'fiscal space' for the MDGs and strengthen domestic resource mobilization for human development, while ensuring long-term sustainability and freedom from reliance on aid. By looking at the evidence with fresh perspectives, the authors present a novel method for how fiscal policy can be made to work for the poor, for the long-term.This volume provides the most penetrating economic analysis of how one billion people can escape the poverty trap over the next ten years through the creation of 'fiscal space' for financing human development. It presents a novel, evidence-based approach to fiscal policy design and domestic financing for real, sustainable, long-term development. It provides a lucid alternative to aid-financed development. It is essential for development economists and practitioners, and anyone interested in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Introduction; Part I: An Analytical Framework for Assessing Fiscal Space for Human Development; Investing in Development: The MDGs, Aid and the Sustainable Capital Accumulation; Fiscal Space for What? Analytical Issues from a Human Development Perspective; Fiscal Space for Public Investment: Towards a Human Development Approach; Understanding Fiscal Expansions; Part II: Country Perspectives on Fiscal Space for Human Development; Strategies and Policies for Enhancing Fiscal Space at the National Level - Empirical Evidence in India; Fiscal Space in Thailand; Fiscal Space for Human Development in Senegal; Plenty of Room? Fiscal Space in a Resource Abundant Economy - The Case of Venezuela; Fiscal Space for the MDGs in Morocco; Policy Conclusions; Bibliography, Index.
