The central question in taxation and development is: “how does a government go from raising around 10% of GDP in taxes to raising around 40%?” This paper looks at the economic and political forces that shape the way that fiscal capacity is created and sustained. As well as reviewing the...

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- I History -- 1 The Impact of Administrative Power on Political and Economic Developments: Toward a Political Economy of Implementation -- 2 The Institutional Origins of the Industrial Revolution -- 3 Institutions and the Resource Curse in...

This paper studies the incidence of civil war over time. We put forward a canonical model of civil war, which relates the incidence of conflict to circumstances, institutions and features of the underlying economy and polity. We use this model to derive testable predictions and to interpret the...