Should Latin American countries adopt structural balance-based fiscal rules?

Latin America has a long history of pro-cyclical fiscal policies, reflecting the region’s exposure to a range of exogenous shocks, tight financial constraints and relatively weak fiscal institutions. This paper discusses the role that structural balance-based fiscal rules (SFRs) could play in moderating pro-cyclicality, ensuring longer-term debt sustainability, and facilitating the coordination of fiscal with other macro-economic policies in the region. It also focuses on the necessary ingredients for a sound design and successful implementation of SFRs. The fact that these conditions are rather demanding, and unlikely to be adequately fulfilled in many Latin America countries at the present time, suggests that a gradualist approach may be more realistic, beginning with a systematic and transparent calculation and dissemination by the authorities of structural indicators to assess the fiscal stance and inform budgetary policy, and moving to more formal rules over time as the relevant pre-conditions are put in place.