Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/76805 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
cege Discussion Papers No. 164
Publisher: 
University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege), Göttingen
Abstract: 
Anecdotal evidence from pre-modern Europe and North America suggests that rulers are forced to become more democratic once they impose a significant fiscal burden on their citizens. One difficulty in testing this taxation causes democratization hypothesis empirically is the endogeneity of public revenues. I use introductions of value added taxes and autonomous revenue authorities as sources of quasi-exogenous variation to identify the causal effect of the fiscal burden borne by citizens on democracy. The instrumental variables regressions with a panel of 122 countries over the period 1981-2008 suggest that revenues had on average a mild positive effect on democracy.
Subjects: 
taxation
democracy
democratic transition
tax innovations
JEL: 
H20
P14
O23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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