Special Announcement

Some updates:

Division of Labor among our blogs

Have also added a new list of PFM blogs.

Special Announcement: Focus on Fiscal Responsibility Laws

For the next 4 weeks this blog will be focusing on Fiscal Responsibility Legislations and their international experience. Comments and views welcome.

Enjoy the following post by YangHyun Jin over at IMF's PFM blog;
Pakistan: Monitoring Implementation of the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Law

BH Economics Blogs Awards 2009

It is out and congratulations to the winners.

Special Announcement

I will be posting Financial Crisis stuff from now on the Tracking the Economy blog.

Special Announcement- Nominations for BH Economics Blog Awards 2009

Nominations are now open- Bayesian Heresy Economics Blog Awards 2009; post your nominations in the comments.

Here are the categories from last year.

The Best Multilateral Blog is IMF's PFM blog - thanks to Michel Lazare for the kind words of encouragement (which of course affected our decision to award )-;

The MTEF Blog (see our August 22 post "Welcome to the new MTEF blog") now goes by the name "MTEF is the Bayesian Heresy." This results from the merge in principle on January 1 (but already effective in practice) of the MTEF blog with the Bayesian Heresy Blog (see in particular the December 8 posting of the Bayesian Heresy "announcing a bail out and a merge."

De facto, the Bayesian Heresy blog had not published many posts over the last few months. The MTEF blog has already inherited the rather eclectic choice of topics of the Bayesian Heresy blog, while keeping a marked for fiscal issues in general (see in particular its recent posts on MTEF and on performance budgeting). We wish full success to this new version of the MTEF blog.

The Best of Current Affaires from Foreign Policy

New blogs from Foreign Policy magazine;


Mark Lynch on Middle East

The Call

The Argument

Shadow Government

Madam Secretary

The Cable

David Rothkof


Stephen Walt

Dan Dresner

Tom Ricks

Recently from World Bank

How could we improve your experience on the World Bank Web site?

World Bank Launches New Anti-Corruption Program

The World Bank today launched a Governance Partnership Facility to help developing countries strengthen governance programs and further the fight against corruption. This new Facility has the support of the governments of the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Norway...

The Facility will:
* Support the implementation of governance and anticorruption programs in developing countries – particularly in poor and fragile states, such as Afghanistan, Burundi, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Haiti.

* Fund cutting-edge work, such as innovative partnerships with civil society, to ensure that public money is used effectively.

* Finance learning and knowledge in the area of governance and anticorruption.

For Feedback: 2009 Development Policy Lending Retrospective;

The World Bank carries out reviews of its development policy operations on a regular basis with the last retrospective having been concluded in July 2006. The main objective of the 2009 Development Policy Lending Retrospective is to assess the effectiveness of World Bank development policy operations in supporting the design and implementation of a borrower’s medium-term development policy agenda. The retrospective will also present the main features of World Bank DPOs; discuss emerging issues arising from the experience with policy-based lending; and report on recent trends in the design and processing of World Bank DPOs and on progress with the implementation of the good practice principles on conditionality.

The draft concept note outlining the main areas to be covered in the review and the proposed process and approximate timeframe can be downloaded here.

A warm welcome

Marshall Jevons of Bayesian Heresy will be guest blogging on this blog.

Two new blogs

The Economic Way of Thinking

James Surowiecki's blog

Congratulations, Paul Krugman

...Paul is "the best claimant to the mantle of John Maynard Keynes" that we have.

Honoring Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman, Guilty Pleasure

Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize

What is New Trade Theory?

Ryding, Shiller, Mayer on Inter-bank Lending, Krugman's Nobel

Tech Tips you need

• You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.
• The number of megapixels does not determine a camera’s picture quality; that’s a marketing myth. The sensor size is far more important. (Use Google to find it. For example, search for “sensor size Nikon D90.”)
• When someone sends you some shocking e-mail and suggests that you pass it on, don’t. At least not until you’ve first confirmed its truth at snopes.com, the Internet’s authority on e-mailed myths. This includes get-rich schemes, Microsoft/AOL cash giveaways, and–especially lately–nutty scare-tactic messages about our Presidential candidates
• Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency converter. Type “teaspoons in 1.3 gallons,” for example, or “euros in 17 dollars.” Click Search to see the answer.

See the full list.

New Blog in the Block

RealTime Economic Issues Watch
A new website feature in which senior fellows of the Peterson Institute for International Economics discuss and debate their responses to global economic and financial developments as they occur each day and offer insights that others might overlook.

If you want to Fight Poverty and Save the World

Accepting applications for the Acumen Fellows class of 2010

Can somebody at the 'Knowledge Bank' email me the following

The Many Faces of Corruption: Tracking Vulnerabilities at the Sector Level
By J. Edgardo Campos, Sanjay Pradhan

Why doesn't the 'Knowledge Bank' make all of its publications available online?

Calling Lecturers of Government Budgeting Courses

I would like to receive the syllabuses of your courses- would post them on this blog, if you would email me. Highly appreciated.

Calling MTEF and PEM experts and practitioners!

If you want to guest blog, send me a one page post- will post all guest posts without censorship, but would edit for clarity and language.

Wanted- MTEF Experts

I'm preparing a list of MTEF experts in the IFIs -IMF, World Bank,IADB, OECD and ADB.

Please provide the names of those who think are the REAL EXPERTS on MTEF in the comments.

Thanks for the appreciation-hoisted from comment

Dear MAI,

Its an excellent idea to start a blog on MTEF. I am also working on MTEFs at the Sub-national level.Congratulations on being recognized by IMF_PFM.
In India MAI would mean mother, hope this becomes mother of PFM.

Regards,

KL
India

Thanks for the plug

IMF's PFM blog noticed our blog recently- thanks to Michel Lazare.

Welcome to MTEF Blog

This blog is an aggregation point and a discussion forum for latest research on public expenditure management and multi-year budgeting practices.