We examine the enforcement of two pillars of colonial rule in French West Africa, military conscription and head tax collection, using novel district-level data from 1919 to 1949. Colonial states are often characterized as either omnipotent Leviathans or administration on the cheap. Our findings reveal their notable coerciveness in achieving key objectives. Military recruitment targets were consistently met, even amid individual avoidance and poor health conditions, by drawing on a pool of eligible fit young men. Tax compliance was similarly high, with approximately 80% of the liable population meeting obligations. Spikes in head tax rates significantly increased tax-related protests, likely prompting caution among colonial administrators. The tax burden was adjusted according to perceived district affluence, and tax moderation was applied in times of crisis. However, local shocks such as droughts or cash crop price collapses were largely ignored. These results underscore the capacity of colonial states to enforce their authority despite limited policy responsiveness, offering new insights into the political economy of colonial governance.

Recent experimental evidence suggests that meritocratic ideals are mainly a Western phenomenon. Intriguingly, the Chinese public does not appear to differentiate between merit- and luck-based inequalities, despite China’s historical emphasis on meritocratic institutions. We propose that this phenomenon could be due to the Chinese public’s greater reluctance to make an active choice in real-stake redistribution decisions. We run an incentivized redistribution experiment with elite university students in China and France where we vary the initial split of payoffs between two real-life workers to redistribute from. We show that Chinese respondents consistently and significantly choose more non-redistribution across different status quo scenarios. Additionally, if we exclude the individuals who engage in non-redistribution choices, Chinese respondents do differentiate between merit- and luck-based inequalities, and do not redistribute less than the French. Chinese respondents are as reactive as the French towards scenarios with noisy signals of merit, such as inequalities of opportunities. We argue that the reluctance to make an active choice signals diminished political agency to act upon redistribution decisions with real-life stakes, rather than apathy, inattention, having benefited from the status quo in Chinese society, or libertarian preferences among the Chinese. Notably, our findings show that the reluctance to make a choice is particularly pronounced among respondents of working-class or farming backgrounds, while it is absent among individuals whose families have closer ties to the private sector.

 This paper constructs a new global historical database on public expenditure and revenue and their components—particularly education and health expenditure—covering all world regions over the 1800-2025 period. We document a large rise of human capital expenditure (as % of GDP) in all parts of the world in the long run, but with enormous and persistent inequality between regions. Public education expenditure per school-age individual in Sub-Saharan Africa is about 3% of the level observed in Europe and North America in 2025 in PPP terms (versus 6% in 1980 and 4% in 1950). We also find a large impact of human capital expenditure on productivity growth over the 1800-2025 period, especially for public education and for poor countries. Estimated returns using our macro-historical database are around 10% or more, in line with micro studies. Finally, we present simulations based on alternative human capital expenditure trajectories over the 2025-2100 period. In particular, we analyze the conditions under which convergence in human capital expenditure could lead to global productivity convergence by 2100 (around 100€ per hour in all regions in our benchmark scenario). 

We combine household survey micro data, tax data, and national accounts to construct annual pretax income inequality series which is coherent with macro aggregates. We provide the distribution of pretax national income over the time period from 1933 to 2022, with detailed breakdown by income composition in the years from 1996 to 2022. Our new series demonstrates that Korean top income shares decreased substantially from the 1930s up until the mid-1960s, following various wars, independence and land reform policies. Income inequalities then stabilized against the backdrop of rapid economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, and decreased even further from the late 1980s onwards until the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, which contradicts the “Kuznets Curve". In the aftermath of the crisis, income inequality worsened due to the rise of tax-exempted capital income concentration at the top. Compared to other East Asian countries, South Korea exhibits relatively lower levels of income inequality in terms of higher bottom 50% income shares, mostly due to a more equal distribution of national income growth at the early stages of economic take-off in the 1980s, even though income concentration at the very top has strikingly worsened over the last two decades, with its top 1% income shares in 2022 returning back to the peak only observed during the colonial era.

This paper studies public perceptions of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Germany amid intensifying geopolitical tensions and growing China–EU economic interdependence. Leveraging a large-scale survey experiment embedded in the 2023 German Socio-Economic Panel Innovation Sample (N = 2,365), complemented by a parallel survey in China (N = 2,000), we document substantial misperceptions: German respondents, on average, estimate that Chinese FDI accounts for 30% of total inward investment, compared to an actual share of roughly 1%. Across multiple elicitation methods—including direct questions, conjoint experiments, and Willingness-To-Accept (WTA) measures—Chinese FDI is evaluated significantly less favorably than FDI from other EU countries or the United States, while Chinese respondents express consistently positive views of German investment. We implement three randomized information treatments: a fact checking correction of actual FDI shares, and positive or negative narratives about Chinese FDI. While the fact checking treatment modestly improves general attitudes toward FDI’s economic impacts, none of the interventions shift more deeply held preferences specific to Chinese investment. However, quantile treatment effect analysis reveals that information interventions do influence respondents at the lower end of the WTA distribution—those more receptive to Chinese FDI ex ante—highlighting heterogeneity in responsiveness. These findings underscore the limits of light-touch informational treatments in shifting entrenched preferences tied to national identity and geopolitical worldviews, while pointing to their potential efficacy among less ideologically committed subpopulations.