In many developing countries, weak institutions and fiscal mismanagement often lead to poor access to and delivery of public services. Understanding the links between public expenditure and development can provide insights for poverty reduction strategies and key development goals.

With this objective, IFPRI has compiled the Statistics of Public Expenditure for Economic Development (SPEED) database, providing the most comprehensive publicly available public expenditure information for 67 countries in six sectors: agriculture, education, health, defense, social protection, and transportation and communication, from 1980 through 2007.

The SPEED database expands significantly on previous work by Fan and Saurkar (2006) and others. It is envisioned that SPEED can be broadly used by researchers, policymakers, donors, and others in the development community for a variety of economic and policy applications.