Fiscal Sustainability, Volatility and Oil Wealth: A Stochastic Analysis of Fiscal Spending Rules

Whether fiscal policy is sustainable depends on a government's future revenue and expenditure streams, both of which are highly uncertain. In commodity-rich countries, this problem is intensified by unpredictable and volatile commodity prices. We show how spending rules for oil income and non-oil primary deficits interact and influence the stochastic distribution of future debt stocks and demonstrate the variance reducing impact of feedback rules for primary deficits in a case study of oil-and-gas exporter Azerbaijan.