THE CREDIBILITY OF FISCAL RULES POLICY AND BUSINESS CYCLE VOLATILITY

Haryo Kuncoro

Abstract


This aim of this paper is two-fold; first, it studies the impact of fiscal rule policy credibility on output growth stability; second, it compares to discretionary as well as automatic stabilizer fiscal policy. Employing quarterly data over the period 2001-2013 in the case of Indonesia, we obtain that the credible debt rule leads to decrease the volatility of output growth while the incredible deficit rule does not have any effect. Both unsystematic and systematic components of discretionary fiscal policy have a stabilizing function. Interestingly, the automatic stabilization tends to induce the output growth volatility. Given those results, we infer that government spending is not a good automatic stabilizer. It seems that the lower ratio of government expenditure to GDP along with improving credibility of deficit rule policy has a smoother effect on the economy. Therefore, they implicitly support expenditure cuts in implementing fiscal adjustment in order to reach fiscal sustainability in the short-run and stable economic growth in the long-run.

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Keyword(s)


output growth volatility, credible fiscal policy, government size, openness

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