Work

Fiscal Transparency for Sustainable Development: The Global Evidence

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: ABSTRACT Sustainable development (SD) has been a primary policy effort in government globally to address various key challenges in development and the environment. Transparency, as an accountability tool, is critical for stakeholders holding government administrations accountable for SD policy outcomes. Given the very limited literature on the role of administrative transparency in SD, this study creates a comprehensive global panel database covering the period from 2006 to 2022 to examine the effect of fiscal transparency on sustainability policy performance. The results indicate a significant role of developing transparency institutions in promoting SD goals, and distinctive effect of such development in countries of different development stages. The findings point to different paths for achieving accountability goals under different institutional conditions, which is significant for establishing and strengthening accountability enhancement strategies for policy outcomes.

Source: Public Administration and Development

DOI: 10.1002/pad.70117

Authors: Jingyuan Xu, Xiaohu Wang, Hanyu Xiao, Zhihang Yuan

Institutions: Fudan University, City University of Hong Kong, Education University of Hong Kong, Zhejiang University

Language: English

Topic: Fiscal Policies and Political Economy

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China