Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe currency devaluations of the 1930s facilitated a faster recovery from the Great Depression in the countries depreciating, but their unilateral manner provoked retaliatory and discriminatory commercial policies abroad. This article explores the importance of the retaliatory motive in the imposition of trade barriers by gold bloc countries during the 1930s and its effects on trade. Relying on new and existing datasets on the introduction of quotas, tariffs, and bilateral trade costs, the quantification of the discriminatory response suggests that these countries imposed significant beggar‐my‐neighbour penalties. The penalties reduced trade to a similar degree that modern regional trade agreements foster trade. Furthermore, the analysis of contemporary newspapers reveals that the devaluations of the early 1930s triggered an Anglo‐French trade conflict marked by tit‐for‐tat protectionist policies. With regards to global trade, the unilateral currency depreciations came at a high price in political and economic terms. These costs must have necessarily reduced their benefit to the world as a whole.

What is the level of state capacity in developing countries today, and what have been its drivers over the past century? We construct a comprehensive new dataset of tax and revenue collection for 46 African polities from 1900 to 2015. Descriptive analysis shows that many polities in Africa have been characterized by strong growth in fiscal capacity. As a next step, we explain this growth using a fixed-effects long-run panel setting. The results show that canonical state-building factors such as democratic institutions and interstate warfare can increase revenue collection, while government turnover reduces it. Access to external credit and foreign aid are even more important, and both negatively affect fiscal capacity. In addition, access to external revenues, especially from commodity exports and debt, moderates the operation of canonical state-building factors such as democracy and conflict. These insights add important nuances to established theories of state building. Not only are states in Africa more capable than hitherto thought, but the international environment shapes their capacity, both directly and indirectly.