We examine the relationships between warfare, taxation, and political change in the context of the political unification of the Italian peninsula. Using a comprehensive new database, we argue that external and internal threat environments had significant implications for the demand for military...

This paper uses a new panel dataset to perform a statistical analysis of political regimes and financial rectitude over the long run. Old Regime polities in Europe typically suffered from fiscal fragmentation and absolutist rule. By the start of World War I, however, many such countries had...

We exploit differences in casualties sustained in pre-modern wars to estimate the impact of fiscal capacity on economic performance. In the past, states fought different amounts of external conflicts, of various lengths and magnitudes. To raise the revenues to wage wars, states made fiscal...