IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_11945.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Political Costs of Taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Eva Davoine
  • Joseph Enguehard
  • Igor Kolesnikov

Abstract

We examine the political costs of taxation in early modern France. We focus on efforts to enforce the salt tax, the rate of which varied across regions. Using a spatial difference-in-discontinuities design, we compare municipalities just inside the high-tax region with those just outside, before and after a reform aimed at curbing illicit salt smuggling. We find that tax enforcement led to a twenty-fold increase in conflicts between taxpayers and the state in municipalities in the high-tax region. This effect persists until the French Revolution, supporting the view that enforcing the salt tax incurred significant political costs. Finally, we document that the likelihood of conflict increases with tax differences between neighboring regions, which we use to derive an upper bound on the political costs of increased tax enforcement in this historical period.

Suggested Citation

  • Eva Davoine & Joseph Enguehard & Igor Kolesnikov, 2025. "The Political Costs of Taxation," CESifo Working Paper Series 11945, CESifo.
  • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11945
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11945.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cédric Chambru, 2023. "Environmental shocks, religious struggle, and resilience: a contribution to the economic history of Ancien Régime France," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 27(4), pages 638-640.
    2. Chambru, Cédric & Maneuvrier-Hervieu, Paul, 2024. "Introducing HiSCoD: A New Gateway for the Study of Historical Social Conflict," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 118(2), pages 1084-1091, May.
    3. Ridolfi, Leonardo, 2019. "Six Centuries of Real Wages in France from Louis IX to Napoleon III: 1250–1860," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(3), pages 589-627, September.
    4. Anne Degrave, 2023. "Local Rule, Elites, and Popular Grievances: Evidence from Ancien Régime France," Journal of Historical Political Economy, now publishers, vol. 3(1), pages 1-29, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leonardo Ridolfi, 2024. "Gender inequality in a transition economy: heights and sexual height dimorphism in Southwestern France, 1640–1850," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 18(1), pages 37-102, January.
    2. Desierto, Desiree & Koyama, Mark, 2024. "The Political Economy of Status Competition: Sumptuary Laws in Preindustrial Europe," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(2), pages 479-516, June.
    3. Weisdorf, Jacob & Rota, Mauro, 2020. "Italy and the Industrial Revolution: Evidence from Stable Employment in Rural Areas," CEPR Discussion Papers 14652, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Giommoni, Tommaso & Tabellini, Marco & Loumeau, Gabriel, 2025. "Extractive Taxation and the French Revolution," IZA Discussion Papers 17825, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Giovanni Federico & Alessandro Nuvolari & Leonardo Ridolfi & Michelangelo Vasta, 2021. "The race between the snail and the tortoise: skill premium and early industrialization in Italy (1861–1913)," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 15(1), pages 1-42, January.
    6. Cédric Chambru & Emeric Henry & Benjamin Marx, 2024. "The Dynamic Consequences of State Building: Evidence from the French Revolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(11), pages 3578-3622, November.
    7. Kufenko, Vadim & Khaustova, Ekaterina & Geloso, Vincent, 2022. "Escape underway: Malthusian pressures in late imperial Moscow," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    8. Claridge, Jordan & Delabastita, Vincent & Gibbs, Spike, 2023. "Wages and labour relations in the Middle Ages: it's not (all) about the money," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120307, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Nuvolari, Alessandro & Ridolfi, Leonardo, 2020. "L’Histoire Immobile? A Reappraisal of French Economic Growth using the Demand-Side Approach, 1280-1850," CEPR Discussion Papers 14985, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Philipp Koch & Viktor Stojkoski & C'esar A. Hidalgo, 2025. "Augmenting the availability of historical GDP per capita estimates through machine learning," Papers 2505.09399, arXiv.org.
    11. Albertus, Michael & Gay, Victor, 2024. "The Road to Rebellion: Rural Uprisings and State-Building in the Run-Up to the French Revolution," TSE Working Papers 24-1557, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Feb 2025.
    12. Vincent Geloso & Peter T. Leeson, 2020. "Are Anarcho-Capitalists Insane? Medieval Icelandic Conflict Institutions in Comparative Perspective," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 130(6), pages 957-974.
    13. Sebastian Ottinger & Lukas Rosenberger, 2024. "The American Origin of the French Revolution," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp774, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    14. Victor Gay & Paula Eugenia Gobbi & Marc Goñi, 2023. "Revolutionary Transition: Inheritance Changeand Fertility Decline," Working Papers ECARES 2023-20, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    15. repec:ehl:wpaper:120307 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Sara Horrell, 2023. "Household consumption patterns and the consumer price index, England, 1260–1869," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(4), pages 1023-1050, November.
    17. Claridge, Jordan & Delabastita, Vincent & Gibbs, Spike, 2024. "(In-kind) Wages and labour relations in the Middle Ages: It’s not (all) about the money," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    18. Boško Mijatović & Branko Milanović, 2021. "The real urban wage in an agricultural economy without landless farmers: Serbia, 1862–1910," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 74(2), pages 424-448, May.
    19. Cédric Chambru & Paul Maneuvrier‐Hervieu, 2023. "The evolution of wages in early modern Normandy (1600–1850)," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(3), pages 917-940, August.
    20. Cummins, Neil, 2020. "The micro-evidence for the Malthusian system. France, 1670–1840," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    21. Leonardo Ridolfi, 2024. "Gender inequality in a transition economy: heights and sexual height dimorphism in Southwestern France, 1640–1850," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 18(1), pages 37-102, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H39 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Other
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • N43 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_11945. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.