Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/289564 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 423
Version Description: 
Revised version, March 2024
Publisher: 
University of Zurich, Department of Economics, Zurich
Abstract: 
Do strong states affect the culture and actions of their citizens in a persistent way? And if so, can the capacity to tax, by itself, drive this effect? I study how the historical capacity of a state to collect taxes affects the decision of citizens to evade the mandatory military draft. I look at Italy during World War I and identify quasi-exogenous variation in tax collection induced by the administrative structure of Piedmont during the 1814-1870 period. Using newly collected individual data on the universe of the 1899 cohort drafted in the province of Turin, I find that citizens born in towns with lower historical fiscal capacity are more likely to evade the military draft, and that the effect transmits through changes in culture. Placebo estimates confirm that the effect can be attributed to fiscal capacity and is not confounded by legal capacity. Additional results on voter turnout support the interpretation that higher fiscal capacity led citizens to perceive higher state capacity and, consequently, higher returns to participation.
Subjects: 
Fiscal Capacity
Tax Collection
Culture
Military Draft
World War I
JEL: 
D70
D73
D74
D91
H20
N4
P0
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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