Background:

The literature on fiscal theory and policy has shown evidence regarding the procyclical stance of public spending in relation to the economic cycle in developing countries, and particularly in the case of Latin American economies. This paper studies the relationship of budget spending and the economic cycle in Mexico for the 1980-2016 period, it seeks to clarify whether the shift in fiscal policy can be characterized as a tendency towards an anticyclical stance.

Methodology:

To analyze the quarterly seasonally adjusted series of budget expenditure and GDP (at constant 2008 prices), their cyclical components were estimated using the Hodrick-Prescott filter. To explain the cycle of expenditure through the product cycle, a regression was estimated with Markov regime changes in which the state probabilities vary according to the volatility of the product. Subsequently, the time-varying volatilities of both series were estimated as well as their dynamic conditional correlations and the latter were analyzed based on the economic cycle.

Results:

The evidence is consistent with an expenditure policy that has been both procyclical and counter-cyclical at different times of the period under study, as the previous literature has shown, but in recent years there has been a notable decrease in the emphasis of the procyclicality of the budget public expenditure, which even suggests that fiscal policy has become acyclical.

Conclusions:

Unless the policy makers act towards other direction, fiscal policy can be expected to remain acyclical and, therefore, budgetary spending will continue to have non significant impact on the management of the Mexican economy cycle.