The Design of Fiscal Rules and Their Effects: An Empirical Analysis from 1996 to 2020
Fiscal Rule Design, Fiscal Policy, Generalized Method of Moments
This study investigated the effects of the main categories of fiscal rules (debt, revenue, expenditure, and outcomes) on the economic aggregates that each one aims to control. Using a dataset covering 180 countries from 1996 to 2020, we analyzed the influence of the design of these rules, taking into account important characteristics described in the literature. To measure the impact of these rules, we employed the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The results indicated that the effect remained significant with a negative sign for the debt variable after addressing endogeneity concerns, while for the other categories, the results were not statistically significant, thus corroborating the findings in the literature.