Fiscal policy in commodity republics

JDE: We revisit the issue of fiscal procyclicality in commodity-rich nations–commodity republics in the nomenclature of this paper. Since commodity prices are plausibly a main driver of fiscal policy outcomes in these countries, we focus on the behavior of fiscal variables across the commodity cycle, in contrast to behavior across the output cycle, which has been the main focus of earlier research on fiscal procyclicality. We present evidence of reduced fiscal policy procyclicality in a number of countries. Our empirical results suggest that improvements in institutional quality have led to a more countercyclical fiscal policy stance in a number of countries. The presence of fiscal rules also seems to have made a difference: countries that use them displayed a larger shift toward fiscal counter-cyclicality between the two episodes.