Events

Abstract: Fiscal modernization is key to long-run economic development. This is the first study to estimate the effect of state capacity expansion on labor coercion as taxation, known as corvée labor. To do so, I construct a new database covering eighteen Indonesian provinces over thirty-two years (1874-1905). I find that local state expansion increased corv ́ee labor use. Increasing state capacity thus need not necessarily induce fiscal modernization. However, national-level policy centralized state finances by replacing corvéee with a poll tax. Local officials thus only slowed the movement away from corvée. Opposing interests of different state actors are therefore key in understanding this facet of fiscal modernization.

The Graduate Seminars in Economics and Social History series for Michaelmas Term 2020 is convened by Luigi Dante Gaviano, Victoria Gierok and Roger Lewis.  For more information in the series this term, please email Victoria Gierok.