Lugar: Sala de Reuniones del Departamento de Economía. Edificio Los Madroños, 2ª planta (ECON-2026)

Ponente: Oriol Sabaté (UB)

Título: Investing in Fiscal Capacity: Legislative Debates, Military Pressures and Taxation in the United Kingdom (trabajo conjunto con Agustín Goenaga, working-paper)
Abstract: Numerous studies have shown an association between military pressures and fiscal development. Much of that research rests on cross-national correlations of wars and rivalries and fiscal outcomes (e.g., tax ratios). This article presents a new approach that shifts attention from the correlates of fiscal outcomes to the policymaking process. Drawing on Natural Language Processing techniques to analyze over 2.2 million speeches from more than 361,000 debates of the British Parliament from 1803 to 1945, the article makes three main contributions: (1) it introduces a new methodological approach to study investments in fiscal capacity through legislative debates; (2) it offers new micro-level evidence of the mechanisms underpinning bellicist theories of fiscal capacity; and (3) it presents a new explanation for the delayed effect of nineteenth-century military pressures on long-term levels of taxation in the United Kingdom.