Civil War and Willingness to Pay for Independence: The American Revolution

Paul Hallwood

No 2011-15, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper uses a similar theoretical approach to that in the modern literature on the propagation of civil wars to assess the causes of the American Revolution. Economic causes are weighed relative to political causes as a contribution to the more than 200-year inconclusive debate among historians as to why the Americans rebelled. The key question investigated is whether the economic benefit of leaving the Empire was great enough to warrant bearing the expected cost of war with Great Britain? The main finding is “no”, and that political grievances must have played the predominant role in sparking the American Revolution.

Keywords: American Revolution; British Empire; civil war; causes of war; war of secession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K14 K33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2011-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2011-15.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

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:uct:uconnp:2011-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics University of Connecticut 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark McConnel ().