ESRI Geary Lecture "Making and Breaking Tax Systems: The Institutional Foundations of Fiscal Capacity"

Abstract: We have become accustomed to governments having the fiscal capacity to support revenue raising of more than 40% of GDP. But such levels of taxation were unheard of before the 20th century. This lecture will review some of the trends in taxation over the past one hundred years and how the tax systems were created which support the needs of modern governments. It will use this historical perspective to reflect on the challenges that need to be confronted in trying to build a centralized fiscal state in Europe. Professor Tim Besley is a graduate of Oxford University and taught at Princeton University before being appointed Professor in the economics department at the LSE in 1995. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the British Academy. Professor Besley served as the President of the European Economic Association (2010), is a past co-editor of the American Economic Review, and a winner of the Yrjö Jahnsson Award of the European Economics Association (2005). His research is mainly in the areas of Development Economics, Public Economics and Political Economy. Please register by emailing your name, organisation and contact telephone number to geary@esri.ie

Note to Editors: 1. Members of the media are invited to attend the 2012 Geary Lecture, to be held on Friday 19 October 2012 at 4 pm in the ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2. 2. More on Professor Tim Besley 3. The Geary Lecture is organised each year by the ESRI and honours Dr R. C. Geary (1896 –1983), the first Director of the Institute. Dr Geary is regarded as the most eminent Irish statistician of the twentieth century. Lectures have been given by some of the world’s foremost scholars in the fields of economics, statistics and sociology, including a number of Nobel Prize winners. More.