Fiscal constitutions comprise the set of rules and frameworks guiding fiscal policy that are enshrined in a country’s fundamental laws. This paper compares the fiscal constitutions of 15 federal countries by empirically assessing five building blocks: 1) the power of sub-national governments...

In this working paper, we decompose fiscal policy in three components: i) responsiveness, ii) persistence and iii) discretion. Using a sample of 132 countries, our results point out that fiscal policy tends to be more persistent than responding to output variations. We also found that while the...