Promoting Counter-Cyclical Fiscal Policy: Fiscal Rules Versus Institutions

We explore under different exchange rate regimes how fiscal rules and institutions can reduce the procyclical stance of fiscal policy (i.e. how government spending responds to GDP fluctuations). We construct a fiscal rules index which is a composite index measuring the overall strength of fiscal rules in a country at a given time. We use it in a dynamic model with a GMM estimator, for a panel of 153 countries over the period 1993-2015. We find that under fixed exchange rate regimes, while better institutions can reduce procyclicality, rules increase it or do not affect it. This result suggests that under fixed exchange rate regimes, a focus should be put on stronger institutional quality rather than on the adoption of fiscal rules. However, under flexible exchange rate regimes, we find that institutions and rules are complementary in reducing procyclicality. Rules help reduce procyclicality and are more effective, in particular, when institutions are stronger. Our results are robust to different specifications as well as to the use of alternative variables of institutional quality.