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This report focuses on how major developed and emerging-market country governments, particularly the G-20 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, limit their fiscal deficits.

The paper states the pressing need for a more analytical approach to the allocation of Central Government budgets and to budget forecasts for local areas. In many cases Central Government is unable to deal with individual projects of expenditure or investment and a strict optimisation at this micro level is impracticable. In these circumstances allocation must be based on broad and more aggregative indices, current and predicted. The paper offers a number of distinctions and certain allocation methods are discussed with simple illustrations. It is argued that methods have to approximate to micro optimisation at one extreme and macro economic optimisation at the other. The paper calls for further analysis on the interrelationships between methods.

From an international perspective, a relationship between public sector transparency and better economic and social outcomes is something that is increasingly acknowledged. In terms of lack of transparency in budget reports both bureaucratic model and fiscal illusion theory have been argued as explanations. To assess transparency in budget practices we analyse to what extent a sample of 41 countries are meeting OECD requirements according to its Best Practices for Budget Transparency document (OBP). We find an average OBP fulfilment of 56.4 per cent. Transparency is negatively correlated with corruption and positively correlated with economic development. Countries receiving external financial and technical support meet fewer OBP recommendations than countries not receiving it. Considering the political framework, both progressive and conservative governments reach similar transparency levels. OECD members do not significantly fulfil more OBP suggestions than non‐members. In respect of 4 variables: transparency, corruption, democracy and development, four clusters of countries arise: top‐performing, low transparency‐developed, low transparency‐developing and worst‐performing.

We analyse the redistributive power of the Spanish central government budget to diminish regional disparities in per capita income in the 1991-1996 period. It firstly makes a brief overview of the most relevant empirical studies carried out on this subject, analysing their methodologies and results. Secondly, it estimates the redistributive power of the budgetary policies of the Spanish central government. Its principal interest lies in the fact that the data base used allows the redistributive effect of the main items of revenue and expenditure to be analysed, whereas the majority of studies carried out limit the categories of expenditure to the case of transfers. The results obtained are in line with those from other studies. The redistributive power of the central budget is around 40%, expenditure being much more redistributive than revenue, with the exception of individual income tax.

This paper attempts to examine which factors explain public participation in the budget process in an international comparative approach. In particular, we investigate which socioeconomic, institutional, and political factors promote public engagement in the central government budget process. Using a sample of 93 countries, our results indicate that Internet penetration, population diversity, governmental financial situation, and budget transparency determine opportunities for public engagement in the central government budget process. In addition, we show that not only budget transparency promotes public participation but also public participation is necessary to enhance budget transparency.