Explaining Africa’s Public Consumption Procyclicality: Revisiting Old Evidence

Joao Jalles

No 2019/0100, Working Papers REM from ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa

Abstract: This paper compiles a novel dataset of time-varying measures of government consumption cyclicality for a panel of 46 African economies between 1960 and 2014. Government consumption has, generally, been highly procyclical over time in this group of countries. However, sample averages hide serious heterogeneity across countries with the majority of them showing procyclical behavior despite some positive signs of graduation from the “procyclicality trap” in a few cases. By means of weighted least squares regressions, we find that more developed African economies tend to have a smaller degree of government consumption procyclicality. Countries with higher social fragmentation and those are more reliant on foreign aid inflows tend to have a more procyclical government consumption policy. Better governance promotes counter-cyclical fiscal policy whileincreased democracy dampens it. Finally, some fiscal rules are important in curbing the procyclical behavior of government consumption.

Keywords: government consumption; time-varying coefficients; weighted least squares; inequality; financial constraints; institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 C23 H50 H60 H62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Explaining Africa's public consumption procyclicality: Revisiting old evidence (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ise:remwps:wp01002019

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