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Notices 1 Effective January 2007, the Discussion Paper series within each division and the Director General's Office of IFPRI were merged into one IFPRI-wide Discussion Paper series. The new series begins with number 00689, reflecting the prior publication of 688 discussion papers within the dispersed series. The earlier series are available on IFPRI's website at www.ifpri.org/pubs/otherpubs.htm#dp. ABSTRACTDecentralization is expected to lead to greater efficiency in the allocation of public resources, as subnational governments are said to have better information than central government about the needs for and requirements of public services in their jurisdictions, especially in agricultural and rural areas, where information about rural residents' priorities is more limited. This purported benefit of decentralization rests strongly on the assumption that local governments can in fact exercise fiscal discretion to allocate resources. However, local government budgets are commonly dominated by intergovernmental and external transfers, which are often tied to specific investments, and these at times may not match local government priorities. Thus, local governments' fiscal autonomy may ultimately depend on their ability to generate sufficient revenue internally. Panel data on district governments' public finances in Ghana are used to examine the impact of the flow and size of external transfers on districts' internally generated revenues. The evidence suggests that external transfers crowd out local governments' own revenues, which could potentially result in the loss of equity and efficiency gains associated with decentralization. This result points to the need for a careful review of Ghana's fiscal transfer mechanisms in light of the central government's goal of encouraging districts to contribute to rural development through effective local public spending and public service provision.

Journal article"This article discusses the impact of drought on poverty dynamics in the South Wollo area of northeastern Ethiopia. Using both survey and anthropological/qualitative data covering a six-year period, the paper assesses which households were able to hold on to assets and recover from the 1999–2000 drought and which were not." -- from Author's AbstractISI; IFPRI3; DCADSGDP

Within a policy environment of greater attention to agriculture following the food price crises in developing countries, this Special Issue is motivated by the importance of bringing to bear new conceptual and empirical research on the determinants, trends and consequences of public expenditures in support of the agricultural sector of developing economies. This introductory article lays the groundwork by first conceptually articulating the rationale for agricultural public investments. The articles in this Special Issue add to past literature in three main ways. First, careful analysis of newly compiled data provides new information on the patterns of agricultural public expenditures across developing regions. Second, the papers provide new insights on the cross-sectoral effects of different types of public spending and their complementarities and substitutability. And third, venturing into the examination of the political economy determinants of agricultural public expenditures opens the door to an important area of sparse research.Dans un environnement politique qui accorde une plus grande attention à l'agriculture, suite aux crises des prix des denrées alimentaires dans les pays en développement, ce numéro spécial est motivé par l'importance de mettre à profit les nouvelles recherches théoriques et empiriques sur les déterminants, les tendances, et les conséquences des dépenses publiques en faveur du secteur agricole dans les pays en développement. Cet article introductif jette les bases en exposant, de façon théorique pour commencer, le raisonnement qui sous-tend les investissements publics agricoles. Les articles de ce numéro spécial viennent s'ajouter au corps d'études existantes de trois façons principales: d'abord, une analyse minutieuse des données nouvellement compilées fournit de nouvelles informations sur les schémas de dépenses publiques agricoles dans toutes les régions en développement. Deuxièmement, les études fournissent de nouveaux aperçus sur les effets intersectoriels des différents types de dépenses publiques, sur leur complémentarité et sur leur substituabilité. Et troisièmement, s'aventurer dans l'exploration des déterminants de l'économie politique de dépenses publiques agricoles ouvre la porte à un domaine de recherche important et bien peu exploré.

inequality, social capital, social collateral, socio-economic polarization., Z130 – Social Norms and Social Capital, O–Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth.,