Wars, Local Political Institutions, and Fiscal Capacity: Evidence from Six Centuries of German History

Sascha Becker, Andreas Ferrara, Eric Melander and Luigi Pascali

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: We study the effect of warfare on the development of state capacity and representative institutions using novel data on cities and territories in the German lands between 1200 and 1750. More specifically, we show that cities with a higher conflict exposure establish more sophisticated tax systems, but also develop larger councils, councils that are more likely to be elected by citizens, and more likely to be independent of other local institutions. These results are consistent with the idea of a trade-off between more efficient taxation and power sharing proposed in earlier work. We make headway on establishing a causal role of wars by using changes to German nobles’ positions within the European nobility network to instrument for conflict.

Keywords: N13; P48; R11 Jel Classification: WARFARE; POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS; STATE CAPACITY (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-his and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: Wars, Local Political Institutions, and Fiscal Capacity: Evidence from Six Centuries of German History (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:395

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