Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author He, Wenkai, 1969- author.

Title Paths toward the modern fiscal state : England, Japan, and China / Wenkai He
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2013
©2013

Copies

Description 1 online resource (x, 313 pages)
Contents Credit crises in the rise of the modern fiscal state -- England's path, 1642-1752 -- The rapid centralization of public finance in Japan, 1868-1880 -- The emergence of a modern fiscal state in Japan, 1880-1895 -- Economic disruption and the failure of paper money in China, 1851-1864 -- The persistence of fiscal decentralization in China, 1864-1911
Summary The rise of modern public finance revolutionized political economy. As governments learned to invest tax revenue in the long-term financial resources of the market, they vastly increased their administrative power and gained the ability to use fiscal, monetary, and financial policy to manage their economies. But why did the modern fiscal state emerge in some places and not in others? In approaching this question, Wenkai He compares the paths of three different nations--England, Japan, and China--to discover why some governments developed the tools and institutions of modern public finance, while others, facing similar circumstances, failed to do so. Focusing on three key periods of institutional development--the decades after the English Civil Wars, the Meiji Restoration, and the Taiping Rebellion--He demonstrates how each event precipitated a collapse of the existing institutions of public finance. Facing urgent calls for revenue, each government searched for new ways to make up the shortfall. These experiments took varied forms, from new methods of taxation to new credit arrangements. Yet, while England and Japan learned from their successes and failures how to deploy the tools of modern public finance and equipped themselves to become world powers, China did not. He's comparative historical analysis isolates the nature of the credit crisis confronting each state as the crucial factor in determining its specific trajectory. This perceptive and persuasive explanation for China's failure at a critical moment in its history illuminates one of the most important but least understood transformations of the modern world
Wenkai He shows why England and Japan, facing crises in public finance, developed the tools and institutions of a modern fiscal state, while China, facing similar circumstances, did not. He's explanation for China's failure at a critical moment illuminates one of the most important but least understood transformations of the modern world
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject Finance, Public -- England -- History
Finance, Public -- Japan -- History
Finance, Public -- China -- History
Fiscal policy -- England -- History
Fiscal policy -- Japan -- History
Fiscal policy -- China -- History
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Public Finance.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Economy.
Finance, Public
Fiscal policy
China
England
Japan
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780674074637
0674074637