The Political Economy of Public Finance Taxation, State Spending and Debt since the 1970s

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.

1. Introduction: the political economy of public finance since the 1970s: questioning the Leviathan Marc Buggeln, Martin Daunton and Alexander Nützenadel; 2. Creating a dynamic society: the tax reforms of the Thatcher government Martin Daunton; 3. Fiscal policy in Japan and the United States since 1973: economic crises, taxation and weak tax consent Elliot Brownlee and Eisaku Ide; 4. Swiss worlds of taxation: the political economy of fiscal federalism and tax competition Gisela Hürlimann; 5. Taxation in the 1980s: a five-country comparison of neo-liberalism and path dependency Marc Buggeln; 6. The Swiss tax haven, the Bretton Woods system crisis and the globalisation of offshore finance Christophe Farquet; 7. Postwar fiscal traps Peter H. Lindert; 8. Fiscal redistribution in comparative perspective: recent evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data centre David Jesuit and Vincent Mahler; 9. The state, public finance and the changing response to investing in the future: the case of the United Kingdom since the 1970s Martin Chick; 10. From 'brink of the abyss' to 'miracle': public spending in Denmark and the Netherlands since 1980 Reimut Zohlnhöfer; 11. The politics of public debt techniques: (re)inventing the market for French sovereign bonds and shaping the public debt problem, 1966‒2012 Benjamin Lemoine; 12. Structural fiscal imbalances, financial repression and sovereign debt sustainability in Southern Europe, 1970s‒90s Stefano Battilossi; Index.

Marc Buggeln is lecturer at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Martin Daunton was Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge from 1997 to 2015, and was previously Astor Professor of British History at University College London.
Alexander Nützenadel is Professor of Economic and Social History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.