The making of the Greek fiscal state, 1833-1939

Abstract

The paper studies the historical process of fiscal state-building in 19^th and early 20^th century Greece. A new public finance dataset, compiled from primary sources, is combined with international databases in a graphical network analysis revealing dynamic interactions between economic (tax revenue, debt payments and GDP per capita) and institutional variables (army and representation). The emphasis is on two particular results closely related to the fiscal capacity literature: The first is that war preparation, captured by the size of the army, had a positive effect on tax revenue. The second is that representation, measured by legislative constraints to executive, was detrimental for tax revenue.