I’ve been too busy to even post new papers here as they come out or get published, but will now share two recent Lewis Lab working paper releases for anyone interested:
State capacity and executive constraints in early modern Europe (with Kivanç Karaman and António Henriques)
Short abstract: The prevailing view of Europe’s political history is that the rise of constrained governments and the increases in state capacity advanced hand in hand. We reevaluate this perspective by constructing new historical indices for both.
The century of state failure: a fiscal history of China, 1850-1949 (with Hanhui Guan, K. Kivanç Karaman, and Zhiyin Xu).
Short abstract: We investigate the fiscal trajectory of the Chinese state from the late Qing period to the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. State capacity remained low throughout this long period, preventing economic modernization. The state’s failure to monopolize coercive power was the main constraint to the building up of fiscal capacity.
