Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: the French Empire 1830-1962 Denis Cogneau1, Yannick Dupraz2 and Sandrine Mesplé-Somps3
Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830-1962 Denis Cogneau1, Yannick Dupraz2 and Sandrine Mesplé-Somps3 Abstract. To provide comparative evidence on the states of the second French colonial empire (1830-1962), we build a new database, unprecedented in detail, and in geographical and historical scope. The data reveal that the French colonies had high extractive efficiency, but low productive efficiency. Colonial states taxed extensively, adapting fiscal tools to varying economic contexts and historical conditions, but they achieved little because public expenditures entailed high wage costs for expatriate civil servants, and exhibited a bias toward needs of French settlers and capitalists. Socioeconomic and political dualism emerges as a common colonial inheritance. Ackowledgements: This work was made possible thanks to the funding of the French National Agency for Research (ANR), Project Afristory ANR-11-BSHS1-006. Supplementary funding from Cepremap was also very useful. We are grateful to Cédric Chambru, Anna Peixoto-Charles, Ariane Salem, Manon Falquerho, Cyprien Batut, Quynh Hoang and Björn Nilsson for excellent research assistance. We thank Elise Huillery for participation in the kickoff of the collection effort. Jean-Pascal Bassino was kind enough to give us access to his data on Indochina. We thank Gareth Austin, Guillaume Daudin, James Fenske, Ewout Frankema, Leigh Gardner, Bishnupriya Gupta, Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, Elise Huillery, Sylvie Lambert, Peter Lindert, Eric Monnet, Alexander Moradi and Thomas Piketty for their helpful comments, as well as conference and seminar participants at WEHC Kyoto (2015) and Boston (2018), and at: Universities Bocconi, Bordeaux-IV, Carlos III, Delhi School of Economics, Keele, NES Moscow, NYU Abu Dhabi, Oxford, Paris-X Nanterre, Sussex, and Warwick.
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