Zombie Ideas in Public Financial Management
Zombie ideas – the term Paul Krugman coined for ideas that make no sense but refuse to die – are not confined to economics. There are also a few to be found in the field…
Attacking Budgetary Incrementalism
There is wide agreement that attacking budgetary incrementalism is an important objective of budget reform. But when we go into battle against incrementalism, we need to be clear on what exactly we are fighting against.…
Unit Cost Budgeting: Use Selectively (4/4)
The idea that governments should base their budgets on output unit costs is very influential. Everywhere in the world one finds people who think that unit costs are the key to making performance budgeting work.…
Unit Cost Budgeting: The Uncertainty Problem (3/4)
In this blog piece – the third in a series of four – I look at why budgeting based on unit costs doesn’t work well for services where there is a lot of uncertainty about…
When Unit Costs Don’t Work (2/4)
In this blog piece — the second of a four-part series on unit cost budgeting — I look at why unit cost budgeting cannot be applied to outputs which are highly “heterogeneous,” of which there…
Unit Cost Budgeting? (1/4)
Funding public services based on output unit costs is a great idea. However, it only works for selected government services. The idea that the entire government budget should be based on output unit costs is…
The Illusion of Outcome-Based Budgeting
The notion that performance budgeting means budgeting based on outcomes is surprisingly widespread. It is, however, a misconception – a misconception which has led to confusion and missteps in PFM reform in some countries, particularly…
Making Spending Review Fit for Purpose
Spending review, as I wrote recently, will be needed more than ever in the post-pandemic era. Surely, then, it is encouraging that there has over the past decade been a major expansion in the number…
Don’t Confuse Indicators and Targets
One of the problems which bedevils performance budgeting – and performance management more generally – is the failure of some to clearly distinguish between performance indicators and performance targets, and to properly understand the roles…
Non-Performing Performance Indicators
It is shocking that, in quite a few countries which embarked on performance budgeting reforms years ago, performance indicators remain awful. Performance indicators are, after all, a basic building block of any performance budgeting system.…