Proprietary rule, whereby the state is owned by a ruler who maximizes tax revenues minus the costs of governing, is a useful ideal type that describes many of the states that have ever existed. The study of proprietary rule and its public finance, however, is comparatively scarce. I argue that...

How is quot;public financequot; organized in China? Is China's public finance system different from that of other countries? Can we detect features which link today's system to the past?Public finance refers to more than annual state budgets and constitutional procedures. It includes foreign...

We analyze the democratic politics of a rule that separates capital and ordinary account budgets and allows the government to issue debt to finance capital items only. Many national governments followed this rule in the 18th and 19th centuries and most U.S. states do today. This simple 1800s...