Julian Limberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 2065985 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Julian Limberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Julian |
| FAMILY NAME | Limberg |
| SIGNATURE | LIMBERG J |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8760-4952 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 152 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Welfare State Deservingness in the Era of Mass Higher Education
The educational composition of labor markets has changed dramatically in recent decades. In many advanced democracies, the majority of workers now possess a university education. We currently know very little about how this transformation has influenced perceptions of welfare state deservingness, which are closely linked to support for the welfare state. This article addresses that gap in the literature by carrying out an original survey with a s…
Unequal treatment perceptions and rural backlashes against carbon taxation
Why do we see such strong backlashes against carbon taxes in rural areas? In this article, we focus on the role of perceptions in rural communities that the government unfairly advantages the urban centres of political and economic power. We argue that when people living in rural areas perceive of unequal treatment by the state, they are less supportive of carbon taxes, because they believe that carbon taxes unfairly punish those that have alread…
The Hidden Cost of Tax Regressivity at the Top
How does tax regressivity at the top affect public support for taxation? In this article, we run an information provision experiment in the United States with a quota-representative sample of around 4,000 people and randomly present respondents with factual information about total tax rates by income group. We find that informing respondents that the superrich pay lower total tax rates than other people not only increases support for raising taxe…
Partisanship and the nexus between regressive taxation and the welfare state
Regressive consumption taxes - especially value-added taxes (VATs) - are often seen as a “money machine”: they raise substantial revenue while sparing mobile capital, and thus are thought to help governments sustain generous welfare states under fiscal pressure. Existing accounts largely treat this “regressive tax-welfare nexus” as a structural relationship that operates independently of political context. We revisit this assumption by foreground…
Taxes on top incomes and financialisation
Financialisation is one of the most prominent economic developments of the past half century in the advanced democracies. While the existing literature focuses on financial deregulation and liberalisation as the key policy changes driving financialisation, this paper contends that tax policy also plays a crucial role. More specifically, we argue that cuts to taxes on top incomes disproportionately benefit the financial sector, as it pays unusuall…
The ICT revolution and preferences for taxing top earners
How has the ICT-driven transformation of labour markets in recent decades affected redistributive preferences? We move beyond existing research by focusing on the ‘winners’ of the ICT revolution and on other-regarding preferences for taxing top earners. We carry out an interactive, online experiment with around 3000 US respondents to test whether fairness perceptions and redistributive preferences differ when top incomes are gained through luck, …
The climate crisis, policy distraction and support for fuel taxation
The climate crisis looms but support for fuel taxation is low. How to boost support? The obvious way is to make the connection to the climate crisis explicit. Many observers fear, however, that policy myopia renders this strategy ineffective: As the consequences of the climate crisis are long‐term and insecure, people are loath to pay for costly countermeasures in the short term. We look at policy distraction as a second potential drag. We argue …
Revenue, Redistribution, and the Rise and Fall of Inheritance Taxation
Why do countries repeal the inheritance tax? To investigate this question, we use a novel dataset on inheritance tax introductions and repeals worldwide. We argue that revenue requirements are the main determinant of repeal risks: The inheritance tax is resilient as long as it is central to the national revenue system; it becomes vulnerable to attacks once the rise of more efficient tax instruments marginalizes its revenue contribution. Devoid of…
Why do (some) ordinary Americans support tax cuts for the rich? Evidence from a randomised survey experiment
Why do (some) ordinary citizens support tax cuts for the rich? We test four prominent explanations – unenlightened self-interest, fairness considerations, prospect of upward mobility, and trickle-down beliefs – using a randomised, online information provision experiment, embedded in a representative survey of around 3000 US Americans. The results show that preferences for taxing the rich are fundamentally affected by information that shifts citiz…
Condemned to complexity? Growing state activity and complex policy systems
Does growing state activity inevitably lead to more complex policy systems? In this article, we offer a new, comprehensive approach that systematically differentiates between the size and the complexity of policy portfolios to answer this question. Looking at data from 21 OECD countries over more than three decades (1980–2015) in the areas of social and environmental policy, we find substantial variation in the size and complexity of policy portf…
Building a tax state in the 21st century: Fiscal pressure, political regimes, and consumption taxation
How can states expand their fiscal capacity in the 21st century? I examine this question by looking at one of the most powerful contemporary fiscal tools at hand – the Value-Added Tax (VAT). Using a novel dataset on VAT rates worldwide since 2000, I argue that fiscal problem pressure can lead to an expanded usage of the VAT. However, this effect depends on the type of political regime. Whereas democracies tend to raise VAT in dire fiscal times, V…
The historical origins of wealth taxation
Which factors have driven wealth taxation over the long run of history? We look at a new dataset on the first permanent introduction of taxes on net wealth, i.e., recurrent taxes levied based on the absolute value of an individual’s financial assets, to answer this question. First, we place the introduction of wealth taxation in the historical genesis of the modern tax state. We find that recurrent taxes on net wealth are a more recent, yet less …
The knowledge economy and taxes on the rich
What drives taxes on the rich? In this article, we claim that the existing empirical literature on taxing the rich suffers from two key shortcomings: 1) It pays too little attention to the major structural and technological changes that have taken place in advanced capitalist economies since the 1970s; and 2) it lacks consensus on how to measure taxes on the rich. We seek to address these shortcomings by exploring the implications of the rise of …
Implementing market mechanisms in the Paris era: The Importance of Bureaucratic Capacity Building for International Climate Policy
At the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, scheduled for November 2021, negotiators will finally decide on the future of international carbon markets under the Paris Agreement. While several issues still need to be solved, this 'policy impact forum' article seeks to raise awareness of an important challenge that must be dealt with at the implementation stage: the lack of national administrative capacity. We argue that no matter how int…
Banking crises and the modern tax state
Have banking crises boosted path-breaking fiscal innovations? Drawing on the literature that deals with the impact of warfare on fiscal capacity, I argue that banking crises have facilitated the rise of progressive tax instruments by causing revenue needs and demands for fiscal fairness. I test this argument by means of event history analyses and new worldwide data on the introduction of the two main pillars of the modern tax state: the personal …
The economic consequences of major tax cuts for the rich
The last 50 years has seen a dramatic decline in taxes on the rich across the advanced democracies. There is still fervent debate in both political and academic circles, however, about the economic consequences of this sweeping change in tax policy. This article contributes to this debate by utilizing a newly constructed indicator of taxes on the rich to identify all instances of major tax reductions on the rich in 18 Organisation for Economic Co…
The more the better? Rule growth and policy impact from a macro perspective
Do more rules improve overall policy performance? To answer this question, we look at rule growth in the area of environmental policy from an aggregate perspective. We argue that impactful growth in rules crucially depends on implementation capacities. If such capacities are limited, countries are at risk of ‘empty’ rule growth where they lack the ability to implement their ever‐growing stock of policies. Hence, rules are a necessary, yet not suf…
What’s fair? Preferences for tax progressivity in the wake of the financial crisis
Progressive taxation is an effective redistributive tool in times of growing inequality. However, like all public policies, an increase in tax progressivity is unlikely if it lacks popular demand. Has the financial crisis affected the demand for progressive taxation? Building on research that has identified fairness beliefs as the main factor pushing for taxes on the rich, I argue that the Great Recession and states’ reactions to it have caused a…
Tax the rich’? The financial crisis, fiscal fairness, and progressive income taxation
Has the financial crisis influenced taxes on the rich? In this article, I argue that crisis countries have raised income tax progressivity because of fiscal fairness considerations. I test this claim by analysing a new data set on top marginal personal income tax (PIT) rates for 122 countries from 2006 to 2014, applying matching methods and a difference-in-differences design. The results show that countries with a financial crisis have increased …
The more the better? Rule growth and policy impact from a macro perspective
Do more rules improve overall policy performance? To answer this question, we look at rule growth in the area of environmental policy from an aggregate perspective. We argue that impactful growth in rules crucially depends on implementation capacities. If such capacities are limited, countries are at risk of ‘empty’ rule growth where they lack the ability to implement their ever‐growing stock of policies. Hence, rules are a necessary, yet not suf…
What’s fair? Preferences for tax progressivity in the wake of the financial crisis
Progressive taxation is an effective redistributive tool in times of growing inequality. However, like all public policies, an increase in tax progressivity is unlikely if it lacks popular demand. Has the financial crisis affected the demand for progressive taxation? Building on research that has identified fairness beliefs as the main factor pushing for taxes on the rich, I argue that the Great Recession and states’ reactions to it have caused a…
Tax the rich’? The financial crisis, fiscal fairness, and progressive income taxation
Has the financial crisis influenced taxes on the rich? In this article, I argue that crisis countries have raised income tax progressivity because of fiscal fairness considerations. I test this claim by analysing a new data set on top marginal personal income tax (PIT) rates for 122 countries from 2006 to 2014, applying matching methods and a difference-in-differences design. The results show that countries with a financial crisis have increased …
Condemned to complexity? Growing state activity and complex policy systems
Does growing state activity inevitably lead to more complex policy systems? In this article, we offer a new, comprehensive approach that systematically differentiates between the size and the complexity of policy portfolios to answer this question. Looking at data from 21 OECD countries over more than three decades (1980–2015) in the areas of social and environmental policy, we find substantial variation in the size and complexity of policy portf…
The historical origins of wealth taxation
Which factors have driven wealth taxation over the long run of history? We look at a new dataset on the first permanent introduction of taxes on net wealth, i.e., recurrent taxes levied based on the absolute value of an individual’s financial assets, to answer this question. First, we place the introduction of wealth taxation in the historical genesis of the modern tax state. We find that recurrent taxes on net wealth are a more recent, yet less …
The knowledge economy and taxes on the rich
What drives taxes on the rich? In this article, we claim that the existing empirical literature on taxing the rich suffers from two key shortcomings: 1) It pays too little attention to the major structural and technological changes that have taken place in advanced capitalist economies since the 1970s; and 2) it lacks consensus on how to measure taxes on the rich. We seek to address these shortcomings by exploring the implications of the rise of …
Banking crises and the modern tax state
Have banking crises boosted path-breaking fiscal innovations? Drawing on the literature that deals with the impact of warfare on fiscal capacity, I argue that banking crises have facilitated the rise of progressive tax instruments by causing revenue needs and demands for fiscal fairness. I test this argument by means of event history analyses and new worldwide data on the introduction of the two main pillars of the modern tax state: the personal …
The climate crisis, policy distraction and support for fuel taxation
The climate crisis looms but support for fuel taxation is low. How to boost support? The obvious way is to make the connection to the climate crisis explicit. Many observers fear, however, that policy myopia renders this strategy ineffective: As the consequences of the climate crisis are long‐term and insecure, people are loath to pay for costly countermeasures in the short term. We look at policy distraction as a second potential drag. We argue …
Implementing market mechanisms in the Paris era: The Importance of Bureaucratic Capacity Building for International Climate Policy
At the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, scheduled for November 2021, negotiators will finally decide on the future of international carbon markets under the Paris Agreement. While several issues still need to be solved, this 'policy impact forum' article seeks to raise awareness of an important challenge that must be dealt with at the implementation stage: the lack of national administrative capacity. We argue that no matter how int…
The economic consequences of major tax cuts for the rich
The last 50 years has seen a dramatic decline in taxes on the rich across the advanced democracies. There is still fervent debate in both political and academic circles, however, about the economic consequences of this sweeping change in tax policy. This article contributes to this debate by utilizing a newly constructed indicator of taxes on the rich to identify all instances of major tax reductions on the rich in 18 Organisation for Economic Co…
Revenue, Redistribution, and the Rise and Fall of Inheritance Taxation
Why do countries repeal the inheritance tax? To investigate this question, we use a novel dataset on inheritance tax introductions and repeals worldwide. We argue that revenue requirements are the main determinant of repeal risks: The inheritance tax is resilient as long as it is central to the national revenue system; it becomes vulnerable to attacks once the rise of more efficient tax instruments marginalizes its revenue contribution. Devoid of…
The ICT revolution and preferences for taxing top earners
How has the ICT-driven transformation of labour markets in recent decades affected redistributive preferences? We move beyond existing research by focusing on the ‘winners’ of the ICT revolution and on other-regarding preferences for taxing top earners. We carry out an interactive, online experiment with around 3000 US respondents to test whether fairness perceptions and redistributive preferences differ when top incomes are gained through luck, …
Building a tax state in the 21st century: Fiscal pressure, political regimes, and consumption taxation
How can states expand their fiscal capacity in the 21st century? I examine this question by looking at one of the most powerful contemporary fiscal tools at hand – the Value-Added Tax (VAT). Using a novel dataset on VAT rates worldwide since 2000, I argue that fiscal problem pressure can lead to an expanded usage of the VAT. However, this effect depends on the type of political regime. Whereas democracies tend to raise VAT in dire fiscal times, V…
Tax the rich’? The financial crisis, fiscal fairness, and progressive income taxation
Has the financial crisis influenced taxes on the rich? In this article, I argue that crisis countries have raised income tax progressivity because of fiscal fairness considerations. I test this claim by analysing a new data set on top marginal personal income tax (PIT) rates for 122 countries from 2006 to 2014, applying matching methods and a difference-in-differences design. The results show that countries with a financial crisis have increased …
What’s fair? Preferences for tax progressivity in the wake of the financial crisis
Progressive taxation is an effective redistributive tool in times of growing inequality. However, like all public policies, an increase in tax progressivity is unlikely if it lacks popular demand. Has the financial crisis affected the demand for progressive taxation? Building on research that has identified fairness beliefs as the main factor pushing for taxes on the rich, I argue that the Great Recession and states’ reactions to it have caused a…
The more the better? Rule growth and policy impact from a macro perspective
Do more rules improve overall policy performance? To answer this question, we look at rule growth in the area of environmental policy from an aggregate perspective. We argue that impactful growth in rules crucially depends on implementation capacities. If such capacities are limited, countries are at risk of ‘empty’ rule growth where they lack the ability to implement their ever‐growing stock of policies. Hence, rules are a necessary, yet not suf…
Building a tax state in the 21st century: Fiscal pressure, political regimes, and consumption taxation
How can states expand their fiscal capacity in the 21st century? I examine this question by looking at one of the most powerful contemporary fiscal tools at hand – the Value-Added Tax (VAT). Using a novel dataset on VAT rates worldwide since 2000, I argue that fiscal problem pressure can lead to an expanded usage of the VAT. However, this effect depends on the type of political regime. Whereas democracies tend to raise VAT in dire fiscal times, V…
The historical origins of wealth taxation
Which factors have driven wealth taxation over the long run of history? We look at a new dataset on the first permanent introduction of taxes on net wealth, i.e., recurrent taxes levied based on the absolute value of an individual’s financial assets, to answer this question. First, we place the introduction of wealth taxation in the historical genesis of the modern tax state. We find that recurrent taxes on net wealth are a more recent, yet less …
The knowledge economy and taxes on the rich
What drives taxes on the rich? In this article, we claim that the existing empirical literature on taxing the rich suffers from two key shortcomings: 1) It pays too little attention to the major structural and technological changes that have taken place in advanced capitalist economies since the 1970s; and 2) it lacks consensus on how to measure taxes on the rich. We seek to address these shortcomings by exploring the implications of the rise of …
Implementing market mechanisms in the Paris era: The Importance of Bureaucratic Capacity Building for International Climate Policy
At the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, scheduled for November 2021, negotiators will finally decide on the future of international carbon markets under the Paris Agreement. While several issues still need to be solved, this 'policy impact forum' article seeks to raise awareness of an important challenge that must be dealt with at the implementation stage: the lack of national administrative capacity. We argue that no matter how int…
Banking crises and the modern tax state
Have banking crises boosted path-breaking fiscal innovations? Drawing on the literature that deals with the impact of warfare on fiscal capacity, I argue that banking crises have facilitated the rise of progressive tax instruments by causing revenue needs and demands for fiscal fairness. I test this argument by means of event history analyses and new worldwide data on the introduction of the two main pillars of the modern tax state: the personal …
The economic consequences of major tax cuts for the rich
The last 50 years has seen a dramatic decline in taxes on the rich across the advanced democracies. There is still fervent debate in both political and academic circles, however, about the economic consequences of this sweeping change in tax policy. This article contributes to this debate by utilizing a newly constructed indicator of taxes on the rich to identify all instances of major tax reductions on the rich in 18 Organisation for Economic Co…
Why do (some) ordinary Americans support tax cuts for the rich? Evidence from a randomised survey experiment
Why do (some) ordinary citizens support tax cuts for the rich? We test four prominent explanations – unenlightened self-interest, fairness considerations, prospect of upward mobility, and trickle-down beliefs – using a randomised, online information provision experiment, embedded in a representative survey of around 3000 US Americans. The results show that preferences for taxing the rich are fundamentally affected by information that shifts citiz…
Condemned to complexity? Growing state activity and complex policy systems
Does growing state activity inevitably lead to more complex policy systems? In this article, we offer a new, comprehensive approach that systematically differentiates between the size and the complexity of policy portfolios to answer this question. Looking at data from 21 OECD countries over more than three decades (1980–2015) in the areas of social and environmental policy, we find substantial variation in the size and complexity of policy portf…
Revenue, Redistribution, and the Rise and Fall of Inheritance Taxation
Why do countries repeal the inheritance tax? To investigate this question, we use a novel dataset on inheritance tax introductions and repeals worldwide. We argue that revenue requirements are the main determinant of repeal risks: The inheritance tax is resilient as long as it is central to the national revenue system; it becomes vulnerable to attacks once the rise of more efficient tax instruments marginalizes its revenue contribution. Devoid of…
Partisanship and the nexus between regressive taxation and the welfare state
Regressive consumption taxes - especially value-added taxes (VATs) - are often seen as a “money machine”: they raise substantial revenue while sparing mobile capital, and thus are thought to help governments sustain generous welfare states under fiscal pressure. Existing accounts largely treat this “regressive tax-welfare nexus” as a structural relationship that operates independently of political context. We revisit this assumption by foreground…
Taxes on top incomes and financialisation
Financialisation is one of the most prominent economic developments of the past half century in the advanced democracies. While the existing literature focuses on financial deregulation and liberalisation as the key policy changes driving financialisation, this paper contends that tax policy also plays a crucial role. More specifically, we argue that cuts to taxes on top incomes disproportionately benefit the financial sector, as it pays unusuall…
The ICT revolution and preferences for taxing top earners
How has the ICT-driven transformation of labour markets in recent decades affected redistributive preferences? We move beyond existing research by focusing on the ‘winners’ of the ICT revolution and on other-regarding preferences for taxing top earners. We carry out an interactive, online experiment with around 3000 US respondents to test whether fairness perceptions and redistributive preferences differ when top incomes are gained through luck, …
The climate crisis, policy distraction and support for fuel taxation
The climate crisis looms but support for fuel taxation is low. How to boost support? The obvious way is to make the connection to the climate crisis explicit. Many observers fear, however, that policy myopia renders this strategy ineffective: As the consequences of the climate crisis are long‐term and insecure, people are loath to pay for costly countermeasures in the short term. We look at policy distraction as a second potential drag. We argue …
Welfare State Deservingness in the Era of Mass Higher Education
The educational composition of labor markets has changed dramatically in recent decades. In many advanced democracies, the majority of workers now possess a university education. We currently know very little about how this transformation has influenced perceptions of welfare state deservingness, which are closely linked to support for the welfare state. This article addresses that gap in the literature by carrying out an original survey with a s…
Unequal treatment perceptions and rural backlashes against carbon taxation
Why do we see such strong backlashes against carbon taxes in rural areas? In this article, we focus on the role of perceptions in rural communities that the government unfairly advantages the urban centres of political and economic power. We argue that when people living in rural areas perceive of unequal treatment by the state, they are less supportive of carbon taxes, because they believe that carbon taxes unfairly punish those that have alread…
The Hidden Cost of Tax Regressivity at the Top
How does tax regressivity at the top affect public support for taxation? In this article, we run an information provision experiment in the United States with a quota-representative sample of around 4,000 people and randomly present respondents with factual information about total tax rates by income group. We find that informing respondents that the superrich pay lower total tax rates than other people not only increases support for raising taxe…
Economics (14 works) · Taxation and Compliance Studies (9 works) · Public economics (8 works) · Macroeconomics (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (6 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (6 works) · Monetary economics (6 works) · Argument (complex analysis (4 works)