Fiscal instruments of regulatory competition in the face of challenges to macroeconomic stability during a pandemic COVID-19

The article’s relevance lies in need for empirical testing of theoretical concepts in the new economic conditions caused by the corona crisis. The purpose of the paper is to identify the manifestations of macroeconomic instability in the period before and after the pandemic and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the use of fiscal instruments of regulatory competition to achieve the goals of the stabilization policy of the governments of countries with developed economies. The research is based on the categories of theoretical and empirical levels of knowledge. The use of the method of analysis, abstraction and synthesis, induction and deduction, as well as the system-structural method, the method of idealization, made it possible to identify new forms of manifestation of the phenomenon of fiscal regulatory competition and establish its place in the implementation of the stabilization and incentive programs of the government. It was found that the stimulation of economic activity and the increase in net exports using the instruments of fiscal neo-protectionism occurs due to a simultaneous increase in employment and a decrease in the cost of domestically produced goods, accompanied by the rise in relative consumer prices for imported goods. Using economic analysis and mathematical modelling methods confirmed the hypothesis about the stimulating effect of fiscal policy. Based on the regression analysis of the mechanism of the fiscal channel of the stabilization policy of developed countries, which influenced the dynamics of the conjuncture in the period from 2018 to 2022, a conclusion was drawn regarding the strength of its impulse. It has been found that the fiscal channel less clearly transmits the impulse from the growth of expenditures (financed by loans) to the real sector. It is assumed that in the process of signal transmission, it scatters. It has been established that in the short term, in a recession, the fiscal impulse also does not cause a jump in inflation. In the context of inflationary growth in the United States, Japan, and Germany, there is a turn towards tightening monetary policy, which limits the use of financial instruments to counter the recession and therefore increases the demand for the benefit of fiscal tools to counter the recession