The optimal fiscal policy is countercyclical, aiming to keep the output close to its potential. Nevertheless, it has been pointed out that developing countries are unable to run countercyclical fiscal policies. Several researchers have attributed these sub optimal fiscal policies to two groups of arguments. (i) The limited access to domestic or external funds may hinder the ability of government to pursue expansionary fiscal policy in bad time.(ii) The second group of factors explains that sub-optimal fiscal policies are associated with institutional theories. The standard argument suggests that countries pursuing poor fiscal policies have, also, weak institutions, widespread corruption, and lack of property rights and repudiation of contract.The main goal of this paper is to analyze empirically if the ability of MENA countries to conduct countercyclical fiscal policy is affected by the quality of their institutions, the nature of political regime and/or by the availability of financial resources either on the local or international capital markets.From our fiscal policy regression, we find that government expenditure in MENA region is procyclical. We conclude that MENA countries are unable to run countercyclical fiscal policies if they have weak institutions, small access to international, domestic credit market, and democratic political regime.
This chapter contributes to the literature on fiscal-monetary interdependence in resource-dependent economies in the Arab World, specifically during the post-mid-1990s oil boom. It also provides empirical evidence on threshold effects for oil rents per capita. These findings support differentiated exchange rate regime choices in economies with low rent per capita, such as Sudan and Yemen, relative to wealthier Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies and Algeria. The first group suffers from fiscal dominance, which explains their choice of soft pegged exchange rate regimes and their failure to sustain credible exchange rate-based stabilization programs. GCC countries, however, managed to maintain credible de facto pegged exchange rate regimes and convertible currencies, while Algeria graduated to a successfully managed exchange rate regime. Nevertheless, in contrast to Chile and Norway, Arab oil economies still need to establish credible fiscal rules for conducting monetary policy in order to withstand the effects of permanently lower oil prices.
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