Budgeting in Sweden Sweden went from having one of the largest budget deficits of any OECD Member country in the mid-1990s to now having one of the strongest surpluses of any OECD Member country. The Swedish Government believes that institutional reforms made to the budget process have played a key role in turning Sweden's fiscal position around. This paper analyses those reforms in detail. The paper also explores government reforms more generally in Sweden, a country recognised as being at the very forefront of such reforms. Voucher Programmes and their Role in Distributing Public Service Voucher programmes are an emerging market instrument for the distribution of public services in a number of OECD Member countries.
Education is the most prominent area where vouchers have been introduced.
This paper reviews the key success factors for introducing voucher programmes. The case for independent central banks is now firmly established with the concomitant positive impacts on the conduct of monetary policy generally recognised. This paper explores whether similar arrangements could be applied for the conduct of fiscal policy, or for certain aspects of fiscal policy. The paper concludes that, for both political and practical reasons, such arrangements could more easily be introduced for the revenue side of the budget and presents detailed proposals in that regard. This paper examines the development of the Chilean pension system, focusing especially on two scarcely discussed aspects of it.