A Comment on: “State Capacity, Reciprocity, and the Social Contract” by Timothy Besley

Samuel Bowles

Econometrica, 2020, vol. 88, issue 4, 1337-1343

Abstract: Treating civic preferences as endogenous and government policies and tax capacities as both an influence on and a consequence of their evolution is an important new strand of thinking to which Besley has contributed. I ask: Does his model provide a convincing explanation of the way that civic cultures and the expansion of the state evolved as a matter of historical fact? And I suggest a number of alternative modeling approaches that both would recognize that policy makers take account of the effects of their policy choices on preferences and, consistent with empirical observations, would support equilibria with culturally heterogeneous rather than homogeneous populations.

Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18037

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:wly:emetrp:v:88:y:2020:i:4:p:1337-1343

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.economet ... ordering-back-issues

Access Statistics for this article

Econometrica is currently edited by Guido W. Imbens

More articles in Econometrica from Econometric Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().