Sovereign risk and procyclical fiscal policy in emerging market economies

Abstract

This study develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to account for the differences in fiscal policy stance over the business cycle between developed and emerging market countries, and, in particular, for the volatile and procyclical government consumption and transfer payment in emerging market countries. Two models with and without default option in sovereign borrowings replicate the contrasting cyclical behaviors indicating that the default option is responsible for procyclical fiscal policy. Further, augmented model with third-party bailouts, together with the stochastic trend income process, successfully predicts high volatilities of fiscal expenditures. These imply that procyclical fiscal policy, entailed by default option, may exacerbate the business cycle in emerging market countries.