An empirical study of public debt sustainability based on fiscal fatigue and fiscal space in CEMAC countries

Abstract

This paper seeks first to test whether there is evidence of fiscal fatigue in the Central Africa Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) countries. On the contrary, we want to investigate the impact of fiscal rules on fiscal space to see if the implementation of fiscal rules enhances fiscal space in the region. The findings show evidence of fiscal fatigue for the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon while Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Chad exhibit no fiscal fatigue behavior. For our second objective, while analyzing the determinants of fiscal space we found that the two fiscal rules (the balanced budget rule and debt rule) implemented in CEMAC Zone do not improve fiscal space. Therefore, there is a need for the fiscal policy stance to supervise the conduct of fiscal rules in the CEMAC region as fiscal rules themselves do not enhance the available fiscal space. Besides, we suggest CEMAC's fiscal policy authorities to integrate the expenditure rule in their fiscal policy framework to mitigate the government expenditure bias.