Does military pressure boost fiscal capacity? Evidence from late-modern military revolutions in Europe and North America

Oriol Sabaté

European Review of Economic History, 2016, vol. 20, issue 3, 275-298

Abstract: Warfare and military competition have been defined as important driving forces for the expansion of fiscal capacity during late-modern times. However, the empirical evidence remains inconclusive, and we still lack a historical narrative that explains how warfare has affected the evolution of late-modern fiscal systems. This article aims to fill this gap by analysing the effects of warfare on fiscal development in the light of the so-called Revolutions in Military Affairs that took place in Western countries since the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The results suggest that the interplay between warfare and fiscal expansion has followed an inverted “U-shape” pattern, in which changes in military tactics and technology have pushed public revenues up until the destructive power has passed the nuclear threshold level. Additionally, the results pose that politics is relevant to complete this war-led narrative.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hew006 (application/pdf)
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:oup:ereveh:v:20:y:2016:i:3:p:275-298.

Access Statistics for this article

European Review of Economic History is currently edited by Christopher M. Meissner, Steven Nafziger and Alessandro Nuvolari

More articles in European Review of Economic History from European Historical Economics Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().