The Political Economy of Public Finance

Taxation, State Spending and Debt since the 1970s

Marc Buggeln, Martin Daunton, Alexander Nützenadel

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781107140127
• eBook ISBN: 9781108162340
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

This volume examines the major trends in public finance in developed capitalist countries since the oil crisis of 1973. That year's oil shock quickly became an economic crisis, putting an end to a period of very high growth rates and an era of easy finance. Tax protests and growing welfare costs often led to rising debt levels. The change to floating exchange rates put more power in the hand of markets, which corresponded with a growing influence of neo-liberal thinking. These developments placed state finances under considerable pressure, and leading scholars here examine how the wealthiest OECD countries responded to these challenges and the consequences for the distribution of wealth between the rich and the poor. As the case studies here make clear, there was no simple 'race to the bottom' in taxation and welfare spending: different countries opted for different solutions that reflected their political and economic structures.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Imprints Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Political Economy of Public Finance since the 1970s: Questioning the Leviathan
• 2 Creating a Dynamic Society: The Tax Reforms of the Thatcher Government
• 3 Fiscal Policy in Japan and the United States since 1973: Economic Crises, Taxation and Weak Tax Consent
• 4 Swiss Worlds of Taxation: The Political Economy of Fiscal Federalism and Tax Competition
• 5 Taxation in the 1980s: A Five-Country Comparison of Neo-Liberalism and Path Dependency
• 6 The Swiss Tax Haven, the Bretton Woods System Crisis and the Globalisation of Offshore Finance
• 7 Post-War Fiscal Traps
• 8 Fiscal Redistribution in Comparative Perspective: Recent Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Data Centre
• 9 The State, Public Finance and the Changing Response to Investing in the Future: The Case of the United Kingdom since the 1970s
• 10 From ‘Brink of the Abyss’ to ‘Miracle’? Public Spending in Denmark and the Netherlands since 1980
• 11 The Politics of Public Debt Financialisation: (Re)Inventing the Market for French Sovereign Bonds and Shaping the Public Debt Problem (1966–2012)
• 12 Structural Fiscal Imbalances, Financial Repression and Sovereign Debt Sustainability in Southern Europe, 1970s–1990s
• Index