Weak States and Steady States: The Dynamics of Fiscal Capacity

Timothy J. Besley · Ethan Ilzetzki · Torsten Persson

92 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Economic Journal Macroeconomics

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Fiscal Policies and Political Economy Taxation and Compliance Studies Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth

Abstract

Investments in fiscal capacity—economic institutions for tax compliance—are an important feature of economic development. This paper develops a dynamic model to study the evolution of fiscal capacity over time. We contrast a social planner's investment path with politically feasible paths. Three types of states emerge in the long run: a common-interest state where public resources are devoted to public goods, a redistributive state where additional fiscal capacity is used for transfers, and a weak state with no transfers and a low level of public goods provision. We also present some preliminary evidence consistent with the theory. (JEL E23, E62, H23, H26, H41)

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 92 citations exist upstream.

References

2019American Economic Review 1991Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990.1989Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics 1989Strong societies and weak states: state-society relations and state capabilities in the Third World 2001The world economy: a millennial perspective 2009The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation, and Politics 1990A Positive Theory of Fiscal Deficits and Government Debt 2001States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control

Cited by

2015Economic freedom in the long run: evidence from OECD countries (1850–2007)

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.