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

Denis Cogneau (), Yannick Dupraz and Sandrine Mesplé-Somps

PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Histoire economique; Fiscalite; Periode coloniale; Analyse economique (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-isf
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03105552v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published in The Journal of Economic History, 2021, 81 (2), pp.441-480. ⟨10.1017/s0022050721000140⟩

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Related works:
Journal Article: Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830–1962 (2021)
Working Paper: Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830-1962 (2021)
Working Paper: Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830-1962 (2020)
Working Paper: Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830-1962 (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-03105552

DOI: 10.1017/s0022050721000140

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