In Defense of the Articles of Confederation and the Contribution Mechanism as a Means of Government Finance: A General Comment on the Literature

Russell Sobel

Public Choice, 1999, vol. 99, issue 3-4, 347-56

Abstract: The author attempts to dispel several widely held myths regarding government finance under the Articles of Confederation, some of which were reiterated in K. L. Dougherty and M. J. G. Cain (1997). He defends the contribution mechanism as a method of government finance that is superior to direct taxation by the federal government and presents evidence contradicting the belief that revenue collections under the Articles were poor. A proper comparison is with alternatives at that time, such as state tax collections and the federal government's own tax collections under the new U.S. Constitution, both of which were lower than the collection rate from states under the Articles. Copyright 1999 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents link to full text (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:kap:pubcho:v:99:y:1999:i:3-4:p:347-56

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().