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dc.titleGrowth-friendly Fiscal Rules?: Safeguarding Public Investment from Budget Cuts through Fiscal Rule Design
dc.contributor.authorCavallo, Eduardo A.
dc.contributor.authorIzquierdo, Alejandro
dc.contributor.authorArdanaz, Martín
dc.contributor.authorPuig, Jorge
dc.contributor.orgunitFiscal Management Division
dc.coverageLatin America and the Caribbean
dc.date.available2020-02-24T00:02:00
dc.date.issue2020-02-20T00:02:00
dc.description.abstractFiscal adjustment episodes tend to be accompanied by large public investment cuts across countries, contributing to the well documented procyclical bias in public capital expenditures. We study patterns of public investment behavior during fiscal consolidations in a sample of 75 advanced and emerging economies during 1990-2018 and find that results differ significantly depending on fiscal rule design. Fiscal rules can be “flexible”, meaning that they include mechanisms to accommodate exogenous shocks (e.g. cyclically adjusted fiscal targets, well defined escape clauses, and differential treatment of investment expenditures) or “rigid” i.e., establishing numerical limits on fiscal targets without taking into account flexible features. We nd that in countries with either no fiscal rule, or with a rigid fiscal rule, a fiscal consolidation of at least 2% of GDP is associated with a 10% reduction in public investment, on average. Instead, in countries with flexible fiscal rules, the negative effect of fiscal adjustments on public investment vanishes. Results hold after controlling for possible endogeneity bias in the estimations. We show that by reducing procyclical biases in public investment spending, flexible fiscal rules can add a growth enhancing dimension to fiscal sustainability concerns that have typically been the focus of fiscal rules in the past.
dc.format.extent41
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0002211
dc.identifier.urlhttps://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Growth-friendly_Fiscal_Rules_Safeguarding_Public_Investment_from_Budget_Cuts_through_Fiscal_Rule_Design.pdf
dc.language.isoen
dc.mediumAdobe PDF
dc.publisherInter-American Development Bank
dc.subjectFiscal Policy
dc.subjectGross Domestic Product
dc.subjectBudget
dc.subjectPublic Investment
dc.subjectEconomy
dc.subjectFiscal Consolidation
dc.subjectFiscal Rule
dc.subject.jelcodeH54 - Infrastructures • Other Public Investment and Capital Stock
dc.subject.jelcodeE32 - Business Fluctuations • Cycles
dc.subject.jelcodeH50 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: General
dc.subject.jelcodeE60 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook: General
dc.subject.jelcodeH12 - Crisis Management
dc.subject.keywordspublic investment;Fiscal Rules;scal consolidations;spending cyclicality
dc.typeWorking Papers
idb.identifier.pubnumberIDB-WP-01083
idb.operationRG-E1606
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