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This paper measures the size of automatic fiscal revenue stabilizers and evaluates their role in Latin America. It introduces a relatively rich tax structure into a dynamic, stochastic, multi-sector small open economy inhabited by rule-of-thumb consumers (who consume their wages and do not save or borrow) and Ricardian households to study the stabilizing properties of different parameters of the tax code. The economy faces multiple sources of business cycle fluctuations: (1) world capital market shocks; (2) world business cycle shocks; (3) terms of trade shocks; (4) government spending shocks; and (5) nontradable and (6) tradable sector technology innovations. Calibrating the model economy to a typical Latin American economy allows the evaluation of its ability to mimic the region's observed business cycle frequency properties and the assessment of the quantitative relationship between tax code parameters, business cycle forcing variables, and business cycle behavior. The model captures many of the salient features of Latin America's business cycle facts and finds that the degree of smoothing provided by the automatic revenue stabilizers-described by various properties of the tax system-is negligible. Simulation results seem to suggest an invariance property for middle-income countries: the amplitude of the business cycle is independent of the tax structure. And government size-measured by the GDP ratio of government spending-plays the role of an automatic stabilizer, but its smoothing effect is very weak.
This paper measures the size of automatic fiscal revenue stabilizers and evaluates their role in Latin America. It introduces a relatively rich tax structure into a dynamic, stochastic, multi-sector small open economy inhabited by rule-of-thumb consumers (who consume their wages and do not save or borrow) and Ricardian households to study the stabilizing properties of different parameters of the tax code. The economy faces multiple sources of business cycle fluctuations: (1) world capital market shocks; (2) world business cycle shocks; (3) terms of trade shocks; (4) government spending shocks; and (5) nontradable and (6) tradable sector technology innovations. Calibrating the model economy to a typical Latin American economy allows the evaluation of its ability to mimic the region's observed business cycle frequency properties and the assessment of the quantitative relationship between tax code parameters, business cycle forcing variables, and business cycle behavior. The model captures many of the salient features of Latin America's business cycle facts and finds that the degree of smoothing provided by the automatic revenue stabilizers - described by various properties of the tax system - is negligible. Simulation results seem to suggest an invariance property for middle-income countries: the amplitude of the business cycle is independent of the tax structure. And government size - measured by the GDP ratio of government spending - plays the role of an automatic stabilizer, but its smoothing effect is very weak.
Fiscal policy in Latin America has been guided primarily by short-term liquidity targets whose observance was taken as the main exponent of fiscal prudence, with attention focused almost exclusively on the levels of public debt and the cash deficit. Very little attention was paid to the effects of fiscal policy on growth and on macroeconomic volatility over the cycle. Important issues such as the composition of public expenditures (and its effects on growth), the ability of fiscal policy to stabilize cyclical fluctuations, and the currency composition of public debt were largely neglected. As a result, fiscal policy has often amplified cyclical volatility and dampened growth. 'Fiscal Policy, Stabilization, and Growth' explores the conduct of fiscal policy in Latin America and its consequences for macroeconomic stability and long-term growth. In particular, the book highlights the procyclical and anti-investment biases embedded in the region's fiscal policies, explores their causes and macroeconomic consequences, and asesses their possible solutions.
This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The focus is on the size of fiscal multipliers, and on the possibility that multipliers can turn negative (i.e., that fiscal contractions can be expansionary). The paper concludes that fiscal multipliers are overwhelmingly positive but small. However, there is some evidence of negative fiscal multipliers.
The size of government is a commonly used variable in many analytical studies on the effects of fiscal policy. An accepted practice is to measure it as the ratio of government spending to GDP. However, this is not the correct metric when computing the stabilization effects of nondiscretionary fiscal policy. Intuitively, public spending does not react to cyclical conditions as much as taxes do - as reflected in the standard zero-one elasticity assumptions for spending and revenue, respectively. This paper shows that the revenue to GDP ratio is the appropriate indicator of government size for the purpose of assessing the stabilization effects of nondiscretionary fiscal policy.
Latin America suffered a profound state crisis in the 1980s, which prompted not only the wave of macroeconomic and deregulation reforms known as the Washington Consensus, but also a wide variety of institutional or 'second generation' reforms. 'The State of State Reform in Latin America' reviews and assesses the outcomes of these less studied institutional reforms. This book examines four major areas of institutional reform: a. political institutions and the state organization; b. fiscal institutions, such as budget, tax and decentralization institutions; c. public institutions in charge of sectoral economic policies (financial, industrial, and infrastructure); and d. social sector institutions (pensions, social protection, and education). In each of these areas, the authors summarize the reform objectives, describe and measure their scope, assess the main outcomes, and identify the obstacles for implementation, especially those of an institutional nature.
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected household incomes around the world. In developed economies, pre-pandemic tax-benefit policies and emergency transfers mitigated to a large extent the negative income shock. However, less is known about the effect of government intervention on household incomes in developing countries. The aim of this paper is to assess in a comparative way the role of tax-benefit policies in protecting household incomes during the pandemic in seven Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. Departing from previous studies, we assess the effects both of expanded social assistance programmes and of automatic stabilizers (i.e. pre-pandemic taxes and benefits). We find an important cushioning effect of emergency policies at the bottom of the pre-pandemic income distribution, whereas automatic stabilizers are mostly present at the top of the distribution as a result of reduced social insurance and tax payments during the pandemic.
This paper explores how fiscal policy can affect medium- to long-term growth. It identifies the main channels through which fiscal policy can influence growth and distills practical lessons for policymakers. The particular mix of policy measures, however, will depend on country-specific conditions, capacities, and preferences. The paper draws on the Fund’s extensive technical assistance on fiscal reforms as well as several analytical studies, including a novel approach for country studies, a statistical analysis of growth accelerations following fiscal reforms, and simulations of an endogenous growth model.
The effects of fiscal policy measures, both taxes and public spending, adopted by developing countries in response to the 2009 global crisis are still uncertain. This book discusses them using an analytical framework that allows for distilling possible implications on growth and social welfare.