题目：Tax Reform, Protests, and the Incidence of Taxes in Eighteenth-Century China
主讲人：Liu Chong (Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
时间：11月30日（周三）下午15:00-16:30
地点：大学城华南师范大学文三栋415课室
摘要：Tax agents are widely used in developing countries. This paper provides evidence on how agents may distort tax burdens by examining the impact of a major tax reform on protests in eighteenth-century China. The intention of this reform was to increase tax burdens on the gentry and decrease the burdens on commoners, yet the de facto effect is under debate. I digitize historical data on conflicts and tax reform to construct a new dataset to explore the incidence of taxes from 1700 to 1750. The fact that each province adopted the reform successively allows me to conduct a difference-in-differences strategy. The regression results show that the reform led to an increase in local protests by half a standard deviation. Further examinations find that the increased protests mainly come from the ones by commoners, suggesting that the de facto effect is the opposite of the original intention of the reform. This analysis also provides evidence that social standing affected de facto tax burdens in pre-modern society.
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