Democracy, War, and Wealth: Lessons from Two Centuries of Inheritance Taxation
Democracy, War, and Wealth: Lessons from Two Centuries of Inheritance Taxation
复制标题
民主、战争与财富：两个世纪遗产税的教训
DOI：
10.1017/s0003055411000517
复制
发表时间：
2012
影响因子：
6.8
通讯作者：
D. Stasavage
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kenneth Scheve;D. Stasavage
在本文中，我们使用原始数据集对继承财富税收的政治经济学进行了首次实证分析，该分析涵盖了大量国家和很长一段时间（1816-2000年）。我们的目标是理解为什么，如果遗产税通常是非常古老的税收，那么实施足以影响财富不平等的遗产税税率是一个更近的现象。我们还假设，对继承财富的大量征税取决于（1）选举权的扩大和（2）战争的群众动员所创造的政治条件。使用差异中的差异识别框架，我们发现很少有证据支持选举权假说，但非常有力的证据支持群众动员假说。我们的研究对理解财富不平等的演变以及各国可能实施显著重新分配财富和收入的政策的政治条件具有影响。
In this article we use an original data set to provide the first empirical analysis of the political economy of inherited wealth taxation that covers a significant number of countries and a long time frame (1816–2000). Our goal is to understand why, if inheritance taxes are often very old taxes, the implementation of inheritance tax rates significant enough to affect wealth inequality is a much more recent phenomenon. We hypothesize alternatively that significant taxation of inherited wealth depended on (1) the extension of the suffrage and (2) political conditions created by mass mobilization for war. Using a difference-in-differences framework for identification, we find little evidence for the suffrage hypothesis but very strong evidence for the mass mobilization hypothesis. Our study has implications for understanding the evolution of wealth inequality and the political conditions under which countries are likely to implement policies that significantly redistribute wealth and income.