Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830-1962

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Paris School of Economics; Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD); University College Dublin; Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD); Universite PSL; Universite Paris-Dauphine
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050721000140
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 441-480
• 关键词: thin white line; british; AFRICA; legacies; taxation; revenue; HISTORY

摘要

What was the capacity of European colonial states? How fiscally extractive were they? What was their capacity to provide public goods and services? And did this change in the developmentalist era of colonialism? To answer these questions, we use archival sources to build a new dataset on colonial states of the second French colonial empire (1830-1962). French colonial states extracted a substantial amount of revenue, but they were under-administered because public expenditure entailed high wage costs. These costs remained a strong constraint in the developmentalist era of colonialism, despite a dramatic increase in fiscal capacity and large overseas subsidies.