Did Gladstone make a difference? Rhetoric and reality in mid-Victorian finance

Christine Gunter and John Maloney

Accounting History Review, 1999, vol. 9, issue 3, 325-347

Abstract: 'Gladstonian finance' is generally taken to mean balancing the budget, limiting the level of public expenditure, and making progress in paying off the national debt. Gladstone also distinguished himself from contemporary Conservatives (and most classical economists) by having no especial dislike for direct taxes. After putting Gladstone's public utterances in the context of his rivals, classical political economy, and contemporary views of the role of the state, we use cointegration analysis to see if Gladstone, as Chancellor or Prime Minister, made a statistically detectable difference to trends in public spending, taxation, the balance of the budget or the size of the national debt. He did not.

Keywords: Gladstone; Taxation; Fiscal; Chancellor; Liberal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/095852099330241 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:acbsfi:v:9:y:1999:i:3:p:325-347

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rabf21

DOI: 10.1080/095852099330241

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting History Review is currently edited by Stephen Walker

More articles in Accounting History Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().