When expectations matter: The role of fiscal foresight in government spending shocks in Peru

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of government spending in Peru while explicitly accounting for fiscal foresight—the possibility that economic agents anticipate future fiscal actions before they are implemented. We use a standard vector autoregressive (VAR) framework with recursive identification and incorporate quarterly government spending projections published by the Central Reserve Bank of Peru to isolate the anticipated component of fiscal policy. Unanticipated government spending shocks raise real GDP; however, their effects are systematically overstated when anticipated fiscal information is omitted. Anticipated spending shocks – captured through government spending projections – also generate positive and statistically significant effects on output. These findings remain robust to alternative measures of fiscal foresight, different recursive orderings, and the inclusion of additional control variables, including private consumption and terms of trade. The results highlight the importance of distinguishing between anticipated and unanticipated fiscal actions for credible empirical assessment of fiscal multipliers in emerging economies.