Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830-1962

Denis Cogneau (1, 2, 3, 4, 2) , Yannick Dupraz (2) , Sandrine Mesplé-Somps (1, 5, 6)

1 DIAL - Développement, institutions et analyses de long terme
2 PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques
3 IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement
4 PSE - Paris School of Economics
5 Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)
6 LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine

What was the capacity of European colonial states? How fiscally extractive were they? What was their capacity to provide public goods and services? And did this change in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism? To answer these questions, we use archival sources to build a new dataset on colonial states of the second French colonial empire (1830-1962). French colonial states extracted a substantial amount of revenue, but they were under-administered because public expenditure entailed high wage costs. These costs remained a strong constraint in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism, despite a dramatic increase in fiscal capacity and large overseas subsidies.

Mots clés: Histoire economique; Fiscalite; Periode coloniale; Analyse economique

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Denis Cogneau, Yannick Dupraz, Sandrine Mesplé-Somps. Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830-1962. The Journal of Economic History, 2021, 81 (2), pp.441-480. ⟨10.1017/s0022050721000140⟩. ⟨hal-03105552⟩