Determinants of compliance with fiscal rules: misplaced efforts or hidden motivations?

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic led many governments to suspend their fiscal rules to gain additional fiscal space to mitigate the social and economic consequences of the health crisis. As a result, the return and subsequent compliance with fiscal rules have been compromised, and the opportunity to improve them and consider the new global macroeconomic conditions has emerged. Understanding what elements relate to increased compliance with the rules and what has worked and has not can shed light on upcoming reforms. This paper uses an empirical model to investigate Latin American countries' factors influencing numerical compliance with fiscal rules. We associate three groups of specific factors with a greater or lesser probability of compliance with the rule: the macroeconomic and political environment of the countries and the design features of the enforced rules. We find that only changes in the macroeconomic and political context are associated with higher levels of compliance. In contrast, the institutional design of the fiscal rules does not seem to play an essential role in the compliance outcome. This result suggests that adjustments in this direction are not decisive for rule compliance.