Didac Queralt
Biographic Data
| ID | 2026503 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Didac Queralt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Didac |
| FAMILY NAME | Queralt |
| SIGNATURE | QUERALT D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8523-3783 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 160 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Imperial Aid and Tax Mobilization in Late Colonial Africa
In 1929, the British Empire launched a four-decade development initiative to modernize colonial economies without self-government. Known as the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, the program required colonial administrations to raise local taxes to cofinance development projects. This article shows that imperial aid expanded colonial taxation only after organizational reforms in the Colonial Service screened in officials who shared the metrop…
From Territorial Consolidation to Bureaucratic Dominance: The Long Arc of State Development
Our understanding of state development—a term that encompasses both state formation and state building—has grown significantly in the last two decades. In this review, I outline the foundations of the literature and identify major conceptual and analytical advancements since the early 2000s, including the development of capacity investment models, the notion of intermediate institutions, and the emphasis on political agency. This review builds on…
Historical Family Types and Female Political Representation: Persistence and Change
The Political Legacy of Elite Repression
Most work on the legacies of violence studies mass repression. In this paper, we explore the longterm effects of selective repression of local elites on ordinary community members who had not been subject to direct repression. Drawing on the literature on the legacy of violence against civilians, we hypothesize that elite-targeted repression creates a political backlash in the affected communities. Examining the legacy of Nazi-era repression of C…
Do gains in political representation sweeten tax reform in China? It depends on who you ask
Governments can grant political concessions to induce quasi-voluntary compliance with taxation, yet empirical evidence probing the taxation–representation connection remains inconclusive. We contend that this association remains valid but it is primarily confined to business elites in nondemocratic regimes because the same wealth that exposes them to state predation also incentivizes them to endorse tax policies that offer greater political repre…
Pawned States: State Building in the Era of International Finance
In the nineteenth century, many developing countries turned to the credit houses of Europe for sovereign loans to balance their books and weather major fiscal shocks such as war. This reliance on external public finance offered emerging nations endless opportunities to overcome barriers to growth, but it also enabled rulers to bypass critical stages in institution building and political development. This book reveals how easy access to foreign le…
Pawned States: State Building in the Era of International Finance
The Divide Over Independence: Explaining Preferences for Secession in an Advanced Open Economy
Anticipated trade, insurance, and fiscal shocks from independence structure preferences for secession independently from nonmaterial considerations. To test this claim, we draw from an original survey conducted in Catalonia before the 2017 regional election, which followed a suspended declaration of independence. Trade shocks produce differential effects depending on market specialization: Respondents working in sectors and at firms specializing …
Fiscal innovation in nondemocratic regimes: Elites and the adoption of the prussian income taxes of the 1890s
War, International Finance, and Fiscal Capacity in the Long Run
In this article I revisit the relationship between war and state making in modern times by focusing on two prominent types of war finance: taxes and foreign loans. Financing war with tax money enhances the capacity to assess wealth and monitor compliance, namely fiscal capacity. Tax-financed war facilitates the adoption of power-sharing institutions, which transform taxation into a non-zero-sum game, carrying on the effect of war in the long run.…
Protection Not for Sale, But for Tax Compliance
How do rulers raise taxes when the fiscal capacity of the state is weak? I argue that, in conditions of low fiscal capacity, rulers might secure high tax yields by granting protection from competition to key domestic producers. I offer qualitative evidence of this exchange in the developing world today and test the theory against a sample of thirty-two developing states in Latin American, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union circa 2005. Re…
From Mercantilism to Free Trade: A History of Fiscal Capacity Building
This paper presents a theory explaining how trade policy is contingent on the development of fiscal capacity. The paper investigates the conditions under which mercantilism is adopted as a substitute for taxation when fiscal capacity is weak, when mercantilist revenue is reinvested in developing fiscal capacity, and when economies endogenously abandon mercantilist practices and embrace free trade. If mercantilism is pursued when the stock of fisc…
The Non-Democratic Origins of Income Taxation
This article examines the adoption of income taxes in Western economies since the 19th century. We identify two empirical regularities that challenge predictions of existing models of taxation and redistribution: While countries with low levels of electoral enfranchisement and high levels of landholding inequality adopt the income tax first, countries with more extensive electoral rules lag behind in adopting these new forms of taxation. We propo…
Spatial Voting in Spain
This work evaluates the receptivity of the Spanish electorate to policy positions that are distant from the status quo. To that end, two spatial voting models are considered: the proximity and the directional model. The analysis also evaluates the econometric consequences of employing subsidiary measures of the status quo in policy spaces. The result suggests that the majority of the Spanish electorate adjusts to a hybrid model of spatial voting,…
Economic voting in multi-tiered polities
The Non-Democratic Origins of Income Taxation
This article examines the adoption of income taxes in Western economies since the 19th century. We identify two empirical regularities that challenge predictions of existing models of taxation and redistribution: While countries with low levels of electoral enfranchisement and high levels of landholding inequality adopt the income tax first, countries with more extensive electoral rules lag behind in adopting these new forms of taxation. We propo…
The Divide Over Independence: Explaining Preferences for Secession in an Advanced Open Economy
Anticipated trade, insurance, and fiscal shocks from independence structure preferences for secession independently from nonmaterial considerations. To test this claim, we draw from an original survey conducted in Catalonia before the 2017 regional election, which followed a suspended declaration of independence. Trade shocks produce differential effects depending on market specialization: Respondents working in sectors and at firms specializing …
War, International Finance, and Fiscal Capacity in the Long Run
In this article I revisit the relationship between war and state making in modern times by focusing on two prominent types of war finance: taxes and foreign loans. Financing war with tax money enhances the capacity to assess wealth and monitor compliance, namely fiscal capacity. Tax-financed war facilitates the adoption of power-sharing institutions, which transform taxation into a non-zero-sum game, carrying on the effect of war in the long run.…
Economic voting in multi-tiered polities
Fiscal innovation in nondemocratic regimes: Elites and the adoption of the prussian income taxes of the 1890s
From Mercantilism to Free Trade: A History of Fiscal Capacity Building
This paper presents a theory explaining how trade policy is contingent on the development of fiscal capacity. The paper investigates the conditions under which mercantilism is adopted as a substitute for taxation when fiscal capacity is weak, when mercantilist revenue is reinvested in developing fiscal capacity, and when economies endogenously abandon mercantilist practices and embrace free trade. If mercantilism is pursued when the stock of fisc…
Protection Not for Sale, But for Tax Compliance
How do rulers raise taxes when the fiscal capacity of the state is weak? I argue that, in conditions of low fiscal capacity, rulers might secure high tax yields by granting protection from competition to key domestic producers. I offer qualitative evidence of this exchange in the developing world today and test the theory against a sample of thirty-two developing states in Latin American, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union circa 2005. Re…
Spatial Voting in Spain
This work evaluates the receptivity of the Spanish electorate to policy positions that are distant from the status quo. To that end, two spatial voting models are considered: the proximity and the directional model. The analysis also evaluates the econometric consequences of employing subsidiary measures of the status quo in policy spaces. The result suggests that the majority of the Spanish electorate adjusts to a hybrid model of spatial voting,…
Historical Family Types and Female Political Representation: Persistence and Change
The Political Legacy of Elite Repression
Most work on the legacies of violence studies mass repression. In this paper, we explore the longterm effects of selective repression of local elites on ordinary community members who had not been subject to direct repression. Drawing on the literature on the legacy of violence against civilians, we hypothesize that elite-targeted repression creates a political backlash in the affected communities. Examining the legacy of Nazi-era repression of C…
Do gains in political representation sweeten tax reform in China? It depends on who you ask
Governments can grant political concessions to induce quasi-voluntary compliance with taxation, yet empirical evidence probing the taxation–representation connection remains inconclusive. We contend that this association remains valid but it is primarily confined to business elites in nondemocratic regimes because the same wealth that exposes them to state predation also incentivizes them to endorse tax policies that offer greater political repre…
Spatial Voting in Spain
This work evaluates the receptivity of the Spanish electorate to policy positions that are distant from the status quo. To that end, two spatial voting models are considered: the proximity and the directional model. The analysis also evaluates the econometric consequences of employing subsidiary measures of the status quo in policy spaces. The result suggests that the majority of the Spanish electorate adjusts to a hybrid model of spatial voting,…
Economic voting in multi-tiered polities
From Mercantilism to Free Trade: A History of Fiscal Capacity Building
This paper presents a theory explaining how trade policy is contingent on the development of fiscal capacity. The paper investigates the conditions under which mercantilism is adopted as a substitute for taxation when fiscal capacity is weak, when mercantilist revenue is reinvested in developing fiscal capacity, and when economies endogenously abandon mercantilist practices and embrace free trade. If mercantilism is pursued when the stock of fisc…
The Non-Democratic Origins of Income Taxation
This article examines the adoption of income taxes in Western economies since the 19th century. We identify two empirical regularities that challenge predictions of existing models of taxation and redistribution: While countries with low levels of electoral enfranchisement and high levels of landholding inequality adopt the income tax first, countries with more extensive electoral rules lag behind in adopting these new forms of taxation. We propo…
Protection Not for Sale, But for Tax Compliance
How do rulers raise taxes when the fiscal capacity of the state is weak? I argue that, in conditions of low fiscal capacity, rulers might secure high tax yields by granting protection from competition to key domestic producers. I offer qualitative evidence of this exchange in the developing world today and test the theory against a sample of thirty-two developing states in Latin American, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union circa 2005. Re…
War, International Finance, and Fiscal Capacity in the Long Run
In this article I revisit the relationship between war and state making in modern times by focusing on two prominent types of war finance: taxes and foreign loans. Financing war with tax money enhances the capacity to assess wealth and monitor compliance, namely fiscal capacity. Tax-financed war facilitates the adoption of power-sharing institutions, which transform taxation into a non-zero-sum game, carrying on the effect of war in the long run.…
Fiscal innovation in nondemocratic regimes: Elites and the adoption of the prussian income taxes of the 1890s
The Divide Over Independence: Explaining Preferences for Secession in an Advanced Open Economy
Anticipated trade, insurance, and fiscal shocks from independence structure preferences for secession independently from nonmaterial considerations. To test this claim, we draw from an original survey conducted in Catalonia before the 2017 regional election, which followed a suspended declaration of independence. Trade shocks produce differential effects depending on market specialization: Respondents working in sectors and at firms specializing …
Pawned States: State Building in the Era of International Finance
In the nineteenth century, many developing countries turned to the credit houses of Europe for sovereign loans to balance their books and weather major fiscal shocks such as war. This reliance on external public finance offered emerging nations endless opportunities to overcome barriers to growth, but it also enabled rulers to bypass critical stages in institution building and political development. This book reveals how easy access to foreign le…
Pawned States: State Building in the Era of International Finance
Do gains in political representation sweeten tax reform in China? It depends on who you ask
Governments can grant political concessions to induce quasi-voluntary compliance with taxation, yet empirical evidence probing the taxation–representation connection remains inconclusive. We contend that this association remains valid but it is primarily confined to business elites in nondemocratic regimes because the same wealth that exposes them to state predation also incentivizes them to endorse tax policies that offer greater political repre…
From Territorial Consolidation to Bureaucratic Dominance: The Long Arc of State Development
Our understanding of state development—a term that encompasses both state formation and state building—has grown significantly in the last two decades. In this review, I outline the foundations of the literature and identify major conceptual and analytical advancements since the early 2000s, including the development of capacity investment models, the notion of intermediate institutions, and the emphasis on political agency. This review builds on…
Historical Family Types and Female Political Representation: Persistence and Change
The Political Legacy of Elite Repression
Most work on the legacies of violence studies mass repression. In this paper, we explore the longterm effects of selective repression of local elites on ordinary community members who had not been subject to direct repression. Drawing on the literature on the legacy of violence against civilians, we hypothesize that elite-targeted repression creates a political backlash in the affected communities. Examining the legacy of Nazi-era repression of C…
Imperial Aid and Tax Mobilization in Late Colonial Africa
In 1929, the British Empire launched a four-decade development initiative to modernize colonial economies without self-government. Known as the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, the program required colonial administrations to raise local taxes to cofinance development projects. This article shows that imperial aid expanded colonial taxation only after organizational reforms in the Colonial Service screened in officials who shared the metrop…
Political science (12 works) · Politics (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (4 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (4 works) · Public economics (4 works) · Tax reform (4 works)