IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v97y2007i2p290-294.html

The McKenna Rule and UK World War I Finance

Author

Listed:
  • Shaun P. Vahey
  • James M. Nason

Abstract

The United Kingdom employed the McKenna rule to conduct fiscal policy during World War I (WWI) and the interwar period. Named for Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer (1915?16), the McKenna rule committed the United Kingdom to a path of debt retirement, which we show was forward-looking and smoothed in response to shocks to the real economy and tax rates. The McKenna rule was in the tradition of the ?English method? of war finance because the United Kingdom taxed capital to finance WWI. Higher rates of capital taxation also paid for debt retirement during and subsequent to WWI. The United Kingdom was motivated to implement the McKenna rule because of a desire to achieve a balance between fairness and equity. However, the McKenna rule adversely affected the real economy, according to a permanent income model. WWI and interwar U.K. data support the prediction that real activity is lower in response to higher past debt retirement rates.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Shaun P. Vahey & James M. Nason, 2007. "The McKenna Rule and UK World War I Finance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 290-294, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:97:y:2007:i:2:p:290-294
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.97.2.290
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.97.2.290
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James M. Nason & Shaun P. Vahey, 2012. "UK World War I and interwar data for business cycle and growth analysis," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 6(2), pages 115-142, May.
    2. Teupe, Sebastian, 2020. "Keynes, Inflation, and the Public Debt: "How to Pay for the War" as a Policy Prescription for Financial Repression?," Working Papers 16, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • N4 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:97:y:2007:i:2:p:290-294. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.