Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series 284

Research Unit for Statisticaland Empirical Analysis in Social Sciences (Hi-Stat)

Taxation and Public Goods Provision in
China and Japan before 1850

Hi-Stat Discussion Paper

Tuan-Hwee Sng
Chiaki Moriguchi

March 2013

Hi-Stat
Institute of Economic Research
Hitotsubashi University
2-1 Naka, Kunitatchi Tokyo, 186-8601 Japan
http://gcoe.ier.hit-u.ac.jp

Taxation and Public Goods Provision in
China and Japan before 1850
Tuan-Hwee Sng and Chiaki Moriguchi∗
February 17, 2013

Abstract
We develop a principal-agent model to study fiscal capacity in pre-modern China andJapan. Before 1850, both nations were ruled by stable dictators who relied on bureaucrats to govern their domains. We hypothesize that agency problems increase with thegeographic size of a domain. In a large domain, the ruler’s inability to closely monitor
bureaucrats creates opportunities for the bureaucrats to exploit taxpayers. To prevent
overexploitation, the ruler has to keep taxes low and government small. Our dynamic
model shows that while economic expansion improves the ruler’s finances in a small domain, it could lead to lower tax revenues in a large domain as it exacerbates bureaucratic
expropriation. To test these implications, we assemble comparable quantitative data fromprimary and secondary sources. We find that the state taxed less and provided fewer
local public goods per capita in China than in Japan. Furthermore, while the Tokugawa
shogunate’s tax revenue grew in tandem with demographic trends, Qing China underwent fiscal contraction after 1750 despite demographic expansion. We conjecture that agreater state capacity might have prepared Japan better for the arrival of the West after
1850.
Key words: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Principal-Agent Problem, Dictatorships
JEL Codes: D73, N15, N40, O43, P52∗

Tuan-Hwee Sng, Department of Economics, National University of Singapore.
Email:
tsng@nus.edu.sg. Chiaki Moriguchi, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. Email:chiaki@ier.hit-u.ac.jp. We thank Joel Mokyr for his encouragement and suggestions. Phil Hoffman,Michihiro Kandori, Mark Koyama, Takashi Kurosaki, Masaki Nakabayashi, Jared Rubin, Takashi
Shimizu, Yasuo Takatsuki, Se Yan, and seminar participants at Rutgers University, UC Irvine, Caltech, Osaka University, Hitotsubashi University, University of Tokyo, University of Hawaii, Peking
University Guanghua School of Management, the 2012 Econometrics Society North American Summer
Meeting, the 2012 Asian Historical Economics Conference, the 2012 Hong Kong Economic Association
Conference, and the 2013 ASSA Meeting provided many helpful comments.

1

1

Introduction

Why was Japan the first non-Western nation to industrialize? Why did China,
historically the most culturally and technologically advanced country in East Asia, takelonger to modernize? Traditionally, many observers believe that the answer lies with
the Meiji Restoration. According to this view, Qing China (1644-1911) and Tokugawa
Japan (1600-1868) were both governed by despotic rulers who were uninterested inpromoting economic growth.1 Their paths diverged only after 1868, when the Tokugawa
regime was overthrown and the new Meiji government introduced drastic reforms thattransformed Japan. As Beasley (1972) put it,
During the middle decades of the nineteenth century China and Japan both
faced pressure from an intrusive, expanding West [...] Emotionally andintellectually, Chinese and Japanese reacted to the threat in similar ways[...] Yet they differed greatly in the kind of actions that this response induced[...] The Meiji Restoration is at the heart of this contrast, since it was theprocess by which Japan acquired a leadership committed to reform andable to enforce it. For Japan, therefore, the Restoration has something of
the significance that the English Revolution has for England or the French
Revolution for France; it is the point from which modern history can besaid to begin.
Recent reassessments have put the Chinese and Japanese economies on the eve of themodern age in better standing. They have shown that, like Western Europe, China andJapan experienced widespread commercialization and proto-industrialization during theearly modern period (Pomeranz, 2000). However, the revisionist view, too, tend to playdown the differences between pre-1850 China and Japan, and focus instead on theirsimilarities.
Indeed, early modern China and Japan shared much in common. Both depended
heavily on small-scale, labor intensive, and rice-based agriculture. Both were ruled bystable and sophisticated governments long before the arrival of the West. Furthermore,they shared a common cultural, institutional, and technological heritage. As a result ofactive cultural borrowing from China, Tokugawa Japan was also deeply influenced by
1

See, for example, Wittfogel (1957) and Balazs (1964) on China; Alcock (1863) and Reischauer(1970) on Japan.

2Confucianism. Chinese administrative codes played an important role in shaping theway that the Tokugawa shogunate was run (Jansen, 1992).
Figure 1: Per Capita Tax Revenue in China and Japan

Sources: Shogunate’s land tax from Ohno (1996); Japan’s population estimates from Hayami and
Miyamoto (1988); China’s tax revenues from Sng (2010); China’s population estimates from Perkins(1969).

We point to an important empirical observation that fits neither traditional nor
revisionist perspectives, however. As Figure 1 illustrates, from 1650 to 1850, tax revenue
per capita was significantly higher in Tokugawa Japan than in Qing China, and the gap
was widening over time.2 On the eve of the Opium War (1839-42), the Chinese state’s
2Japanese estimates in Figure 1 are for the domain of the Tokugawa shogun only. Per capita tax
revenues for other local lords in Japan were generally higher (see Section 4.2). For the shogunate’s
tax revenue, we include only the land tax to provide a lower bound estimate. For the shogunate’s
population, we assume 15% of the Japanese population lived in the shogunate domain throughout thisperiod. For China’s tax revenue, we include not only the land tax but also the salt tax, customs duties,
and miscellaneous taxes to provide an upper bound estimate. For comparison purpose, we convert percapital tax revenues in both regimes into koku of rice (180.4 liters of rice), defined historically in Japanas the amount necessary to feed an adult man for a year. We did not consider corvee levies, which was
effectively phased out in Qing China but remained a component of the peasant’s obligations to theirlords in Tokugawa Japan. Therefore, the actual difference in per capita tax revenue between China
and Japan is likely to be bigger than what Figure 1 suggests.

3

annual revenue was equivalent to 2% of its national income at the maximum, while thecomparable number for the Tokugawa shogunate was more than 15%.3
What were the reasons for the diverging revenue trends between China and Japan?
It is our hypothesis that geography was a primary factor. China was a sprawling land
empire with vast inner frontiers, while Japan was a small island nation. We proposethat the difference in their geographic size and heterogeneity led to a much more acuteproblem of political control in the former than in the latter. In pursuing our research, we
follow the methodology of comparative and historical institutional analysis proposedby Greif (1998, 2006). That is, we first develop a context-specific model based on
historical details to theoretically examine the nature of the problems that the rulers
in China and Japan faced and then empirically test its implications using comparative
historical evidence.
Between 1650 and 1850, both nations were ruled by stable dictatorships. Following Olson (1993), we model stable dictators as “stationary bandits” who understandthat excessive exaction in the short run would be counter-productive in the long run.4
However, the ruler’s encompassing interest is by itself insufficient to guarantee good
governance. Because dictators cannot rule alone and have to rely on agents to govern,a principal-agent problem is inherent in dictatorships.5 Unless the interests of the ruler
and the agents are well-aligned, in the absence of perfect monitoring, the agents tend
to pursue their self-interest at the ruler’s expense. For example, they may extort the
taxpayers and thereby increase the likelihood of rebellion.
We hypothesize that in a stable dictatorship, agency problems increase with its
geographic size and heterogeneity. Given pre-modern information technologies, it iscostly for the ruler of a large domain to monitor the agents closely. This gives theagents strong incentives to extort the taxpayers. To prevent overexploitation that could
foment rebellion, the ruler has to keep taxes low and government small. By contrast,
in a smaller domain, lower monitoring costs allow the ruler to impose heavier taxes
without risking popular resistance.
3

We assume an annual subsistence consumption of 345 liters of grain per capita in both China
and Japan (Huang, 2003, p. 158). Multiplying this by population produces lower bound estimates ofnational income, which in turn generate the upper bound tax-to-national-income estimates presented
above.
4
In contrast, unstable dictators behave like “roving bandits” due to their short time horizons.
5
In Levi’s words (1988, 14), “absolute monarchs are rulers who possess a virtual monopoly overcoercive capacity but not necessarily a perfect monitoring capacity.” See Kiser and Tong (1992); Ma(2010); Sng (2010) for more discussions on agency problems in imperial China.

4

If the sole purpose of taxation is to support the consumption of the ruling class,whether it enriches the ruler or his agents will not matter to the taxpayers. However,unlike corruption, taxation is rarely a pure rent seeking activity. The ruler, as the ownerof his domain, may use the tax receipts to invest in public goods to keep his property
productive. If so, the competition between the ruler and the agents over the economic
surplus may have an impact on social welfare, especially in the long run.
To formalize our hypothesis, we build a dynamic principal-agent model and analyze
optimal taxation and public goods provision in a stable dictatorship. The ruler taxes
the peasants through agents and invests part of the tax revenue in a local public goodthat protects the economy from exogenous shocks (e.g. natural disasters). If the ruler
under-invests in the public good, the risk that a large shock destroys the economy
increases.
The static predictions of the model are straightforward: Holding monitoring technology constant, as the geographic size of the ruler’s domain increases, bureaucratic
expropriation worsens and per capita tax revenue falls due to managerial diseconomies
of scale.
New insights come from the dynamic implications. While one may expect economic
expansion to generate more tax revenues and higher public good investments, this is notalways the case. The model predicts that economic expansion could actually hurt theruler because it also exacerbates agency problems. When monitoring cost is sufficiently
high, bureaucratic expropriation will outpace economic expansion. It is only whenmonitoring cost is low that economic change is likely to bring net benefits to the ruler
as well as the population.
Our model provides a potential explanation for the tax revenue dynamics in China
and Japan documented in Figure 1. To further test its implications, we examine theprovision of local public goods (coinage, transportation network, urban management,
forest protection, famine relief) in the two regimes. In line with the model’s prediction,
we find that, compared to the Chinese emperor, the Tokugawa shogun displayed agreater capability to provide these public goods over a longer period of time.
We take the size of domains in China and Japan as exogenous in our analysis.
Given the high agency costs, one may ask if China’s vast size was ever optimal. In
a broader framework, such as Alesina and Spolaore (1997), the ruler determines thesize of his domain by balancing the accompanying costs and benefits, where agency
costs are just one such factor. In the case of China, we conjecture that the benefits of5political integration—peace among contiguous regions—outweighed high agency costs(Rosenthal and Wong, 2011), thereby justifying its size. We do not model this, however,to keep the scope of our analysis manageable.
This paper is intrinsically linked to the literature on state capacity. Traditionally,
economists see a strong state that taxes too much as the main threat to economic
growth. More recently, Acemoglu (2005) and Besley and Persson (2009) have argued
that a weak state that provides too little public goods also creates distortions.
Sng (2010) shows that Qing China was one such weak state despite its autocratic
nature and finds that tax rates and the number of counties per square area declinedwith geographic distance from the capital. This paper builds on his work and extends itby providing a comparative analysis of China and Japan. We also explicitly incorporate
public goods in our analysis.
Two other recent papers also examine the causal link between geographic size andthe quality of governance. According to Stasavage (2010), in pre-industrial Europe, highcommunication and travel costs prevented representative assemblies in large polities toconvene regularly and function effectively. Olsson and Hansson (2011) detect strong
negative effects of country size on the rule of law using contemporary data of 127
countries. Importantly, these studies show that geographic size is a challenge to good
governance not only in pre-modern dictatorships in Asia, but also in historical Europe
as well as in many developing countries today.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the historicalbackground. Section 3 presents the model and derives predictions. Section 4 provides
comparative historical evidence. Section 5 concludes.

2

Historical BackgroundIn this section, we compare the geography, administrative structure, and system oftax collection in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan to motivate our theoretical model.

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2.1

Geography

Tokugawa Japan was an archipelago comprising three main islands,6 while China
was a continental empire (Figure 2). At its peak, China under the Qing dynasty (16441911) controlled a landmass larger than China or the United States today. Even if we
disregard the thinly populated regions north and west of the Great Wall, the region
known as China proper was 12 times Tokugawa Japan.
If information transmission posed any challenge to effective public administration,
this challenge was clearly more acute in China than in Japan. In 1853, when the
Taiping rebels captured Wuchang, a major Middle Yangzi city about 1200 kilometersfrom Beijing, the news took 8 days to reach the capital. To send an official reportof the highest priority between Beijing and Shanghai through the imperial postal relay
stations would take 10 days (Xie, 2002). By contrast, a similar trip between Japan’s twobiggest cities, Edo (Tokyo) and Osaka, about 520 kilometers apart, would only require
4 days (Nakane and Oishi, 1990). It is also worth noting that no one in Japan lived
more than 120 kilometers from the sea, which offered a cheap mode of transportationin an age before railroads.

2.2

Administrative Structure

Both China and Japan were ruled by a succession of stable dictators between 1650
and 1850. However, while China was ruled by one dictator—the emperor of the Qing
dynasty—during this period, multiple dictatorships coexisted in Japan.
Nominally, Japan was led by the shogun of the Tokugawa house, who controlled 15%of the arable land (Figure 3). The bulk of the remaining land was divided into 260odd mutually exclusive domains, each headed by a daimyo (territorial lord).7 Whilea daimyo had to swear allegiance to the shogun and subject himself to a system ofcontrols aimed to prevent dissent, he retained virtually complete autonomy over his
domain.8 As such, instead of treating Tokugawa Japan as a unified but decentralized
6

During the Tokugawa period, Hokkaido was populated by the indigenous Ainu people and Japan’scontrol was restricted to the southern tip of the island.
7
The size of domains varied widely. The shogunate was rated at 4 million koku, but most domains
were much smaller. The average size of a domain was only about 100,000 koku.
8
The position of the shogun in relation to other daimyo could be seen as one of “first amongequals”. He could order a daimyo to provide military and logistical support or to make contributions
to public projects (e.g. castles, roads, and bridges). However, he had no right to tax daimyo lands.
An important mechanism imposed by the shogun to ensure daimyo subservience was sankin kotai.

7Figure 2: Early Modern China and Japan

Figure 3: Tokugawa Japan in 1664

Sources: CHGIS, Version 4, Cambridge: Harvard Yenching Institute, January 2007(http://www.fas.harvard.edu/ chgis/); China Historical GIS Project,“Tokugawa
Japan GIS, Demo Version.” Feb 2004 (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/ chgis/japan/)

Essentially a hostage system, it required a daimyo to maintain two residences—one in the daimyo
8domain and the other in Edo—and to spend alternate
years at each place. When the daimyo wasabsent from Edo, his wife and heir were required to stay there as hostages. This and other measures
helped maintain an extended period of peace known as Pax Tokugawa.

empire, we interpret it as a league of dictatorships and treat each daimyo as a dictator.9
We focus primarily on the shogunate and compare it with China proper.10
The systems of territorial administration in China proper and the shogunate werebroadly similar. To administer his domain, the Qing emperor structured his bureaucracy into four layers (center–province–prefecture–local). China proper was organized
into 18 provinces, each province was then divided into several prefectures, and eachprefecture into several counties. The responsibility of local administration fell on the
county, which sat at the bottom of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Each county was headed
by a magistrate, whose term was usually limited to three years (Ch’u, 1962).
In the Tokugawa shogunate, local administration was also carried out by nonhereditary magistrates (daikan). Like his Chinese counterpart, the shogunate magistrate was subjected to rotation.11 They also shared similar scope of responsibilities.
In both regimes, the magistrate was expected to focus on two tasks: collection of taxes
and adjudication of disputes (Wang, 1890; Totman, 1967).
There were only two layers of government (center–local) in the shogunate. At any
one time, 40 to 50 magistrates reported directly to the shogun’s cabinet (Totman,1967). By contrast, there were about 1500 county-level jurisdictions and hence 1500
magistrates in Qing China.

2.3

Monitoring System

Because China proper was almost 90 times bigger than the shogunate domain, it
had a greater number of administrative officials and a longer bureaucratic chain ofcommand. This implies that unless the Chinese emperor possessed superior monitoring
technologies, it would be more difficult for him than for the shogun to monitor local
officials. There is little evidence to suggest that monitoring technologies were better
9An analogy can be found in the theory of the firm, which equates ownership to a firm with thecontrol of residual rights to its assets (Grossman and Hart, 1986). Since a daimyo was the residual
claimant to the fiscal resources of his domain, he, not the shogun, owned the domain.
10
Due to the shogunate’s strong political and economic influences, the institutional features of local
domains shared much in common with those of the shogunate domain (Nakabayashi, 2012). However,
due to data limitations, we leave a detailed analysis of other domains to future work.
11
In the early years of the shogunate, the daikan office was hereditary and was often filled by agentry member with strong local connections. In 1680, the shogun Tsunayoshi initiated administrativereforms and replaced the hereditary system with a more meritocratic system. After the reforms, atypical daikan would serve in 2.54 locations in his lifetime and spend 5.7 years per location (Nishizawa,
1998).

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in China, however. In fact, the two regimes instituted similar monitoring systems thatcombined top-down, parallel, and bottom-up monitoring.
In top-down monitoring, local officials were supervised by higher-ranking officials
within the same bureaucratic hierarchy. In the shogunate, the magistrate’s office wasperiodically audited by the Finance Office in Edo (Totman, 1967, 76). In China, theadministration conducted a grand review once in every three years to evaluate themagistrate’s performance and mete out reward or punishment accordingly (Watt, 1977).
Top-down monitoring, however, could be ineffective in the presence of bureaucratic
patronage networks. To prevent this, the Chinese emperor established an independent
surveillance agency to investigate and impeach shirkers and wrongdoers. Known as
the Censorate, it was the duty of this agency to detect bureaucratic malpractices andreport them to the emperor (Feuerwerker, 1976). Likewise, the shogun sent out censors
to keep an eye on the quality of local administration (Totman, 1967; Nakane and Oishi,
1990).
Finally, to carry out bottom-up monitoring, both regimes adopted petition systems.
The system had a long tradition in China, where it was in place since the 7th century(Ocko, 1988; Fang, 2009). In Japan, it was not until 1720 that the shogun set up
petition boxes in major cities and permitted the public to make suggestions for better
governance or to report misconducts and abuse of power by shogunate officials. The
petitions were sent directly to the shogun and to be reviewed by himself. Over 75% oflarge local domains instituted similar systems (Ohira, 2003).
In both cases, the petition system was costly to implement, as it typically generated
a large number of petitions including irrelevant requests and false accusations. In the
Tokugawa shogunate, each petition was investigated and a petitioner was punished for
misstatement. The system functioned reasonably well and was maintained till the endof the Tokugawa period (Ohira, 2003).12
By contrast, the sheer size of the Chinese population made it extremely costly for the
Qing rulers to verify the authenticity of every petition. Both the emperors Qianlong (r.
1736-1795) and Jiaqing (r. 1796-1820) initially encouraged petitions from their subjects,
but quickly reversed their policies after receiving a flood of complaints that they could
not possibly deal with (Fang, 2009). The system did not function as intended, andsome complainants resorted to extreme measures, such as committing suicide outside
12

In addition to exposing corruption, petitions also contributed to the creation of fire brigades andthe establishment of a hospital for the poor in Edo (Roberts, 1994).

10the palace gates, to attract the emperor’s attention to their grievances. In other words,
although both China and Japan used similar systems of bottom-up monitoring to checkcorruption, it was less effective in China due to its much greater size and population.
The rulers in China and Japan were concerned about the well-being and grievancesof their subjects for both ideological and practical reasons. Because Confucianism
demanded a ruler to treat his subjects benevolently, it legitimized popular resistanceagainst an oppressive ruler.13 This fear of a violent rebellion served as a constraint
on dictators in both China and Japan, and provided them an incentive to prevent theoverexploitation of their subjects.

2.4

The System of Tax Collection

Land taxation was the most important source of government revenue in Qing China
as well as in Tokugawa Japan. Both economies depended heavily on small-scale, labor
intensive agriculture. In Japan, the fiscal base was measured in rice, the primary staple
crop nationwide. Fields, forests, residential lands, mines, and fishing grounds were also
assessed and taxed in terms of rice (Nishikawa, 1985, 23-24). If rice were not the main
crop cultivated, then part of the tax would be levied in cash at a conversion rate set by
the lord.
By contrast, regional diversity necessitated the denomination and collection of taxes
in a variety of crops and metals in China. While most taxes had been monetized by
the 17th century, Chinese peasants still paid part of their land taxes in kind, which,depending on the region, could be rice, wheat, millet, barley, sorghum, beans, or otherstaple crops. Furthermore, it was common for the portion of the land tax denominatedin silver to be paid in copper coins when and where silver was scarce (Ch’u, 1962).
In such cases, commutation rates were set by magistrates based on local conditions.
This high heterogeneity created great difficulties for the imperial court to monitor theover-collection of taxes by local state agents (Ch’u, 1962; Zelin, 1984).
In addition, the use of the village contract system (murauke) in Japan further reduced agency costs for its rulers. Under this system, the ruler levied the land tax oneach village based on the village’s total assessed yield. Village leaders were in charge of
13

In the words of Mencius, “If a prince treats his subjects as his hands and feet, they will treat him
as their belly and heart. lf he treats them as his horses and hounds, they will treat him as a mere
fellow-countryman. If he treats them as mud and weeds, they will treat him as an enemy” (Mencius,
2004).

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assigning and collecting taxes from individual households and transfer the sum to themagistrate. Moreover, households in the same village were made collectively responsible
for the payment of taxes. This arrangement reduced the frequency of contact between
the magistrate and individual peasants, and therefore limited the opportunities for tax
officials to abuse power. Indeed, the magistrate rarely showed up in the villages except during the annual inspections, and villages retained a high degree of autonomy inrunning their affairs (Walthall, 1991).
For such a system to work, it is necessary that village communities remained tightly
knit to facilitate mutual monitoring and discourage free riding. To restrict geographic
mobility, the shogunate mandated villages to keep household registry and required its
subjects to obtain permission before changing residency or traveling.
In Qing China, the primary unit of taxation was the household instead of the village.
Every land-owning household had to pay taxes that were computed based on the sizeand grade of the land that it owned. According to the Qing statutes, the magistrate was
supposed to set up tax chests at the county seat during the tax collection period, andinvite taxpayers to deposit their taxes into these chests in exchange for official receipts.
In practice, however, magistrates often sent their underlings to solicit payments fromindividual households, or allowed local strongmen to act as tax farmers (Ch’u, 1962;
Zelin, 1984).
We do not model the village contract system in Japan in the next section as doing
so would further reduce the monitoring costs for the Japanese rulers and strengthen
our main results. It should be noted, however, that the village contract system was
not a uniquely Japanese system. In fact, China had instituted a similar system during
the early years of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The system eventually unraveled,however, as the potential for migration given China’s vast inner frontiers made it difficult to maintain tightly-knit communities that were necessary to implement collective
responsibility.14
14

As in Tokugawa Japan, the primary unit of land taxation in Ming China was the village (Huang,1974). Within each village, tax assignment was to be sorted out by the village members without
interference from officials. The Ming state also restricted domestic traveling. Travelers were required
to obtain travel documents, and foreign traveling was banned outright. However, in the 16th century,
a rising trend of the wealthy migrating into urban centers as well as large-scale population movements
to inner frontiers put this rigid system under increasing pressure. The migration of a household implies
that its neighbors had to shoulder the extra corvee responsibilities that it left behind. This in turnincreased the incentives for others to migrate, and set off a chain reaction that caused the system tounravel (Liang, 1957; Heijdra, 1998; Fei, 2007). By the 17th century, tax liabilities had to be switched

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3

The Model

Motivated by the historical observations, in this section, we develop a formal model
to study the impact of geographic size on a ruler’s capacity to collect taxes and provide
public goods.
Consider a discrete-time, infinite-horizon game with three types of players: Ruler,
Tax Agents, and Peasants. As a stable dictator with dynastic succession, the Ruler isassumed to live infinitely long, while the Agents and the Peasants are assumed to be
short-lived.
For analytical simplicity, we assume that the dictatorship consists of S homogenous
regions and that S is exogenously given to the Ruler.15 We let the number of regions
S represent the geographic size of the dictatorship and take a region as the unit ofanalysis. In other words, when comparing large and small dictatorships, we assume
that the two regimes differ only in the number of regions they encompass and that all
regions in the two regimes are “identical”.

3.1

The Basic Setup

We first describe a basic single-period game in a representative region. Assume thatthe region is populated by N Peasants who engage in agricultural production.16 Let
Y denote the agricultural output in the region and assume that it increases with labor
inputs at a diminishing rate: Y = Y (N ), where N > 0, Y (0) = 0, Y 0 (·) > 0, andY 00 (·) < 0. In other words, the aggregate output increases with population, and hence
population growth and economic growth are synonyms in our model.
In each region, the Ruler sets a tax rate τ and sends a fixed number of Agents tocollect taxes from the Peasants, where each Agent is assigned to a single jurisdiction.17
When collecting taxes, the representative Agent may demand extralegal surcharge offrom community-based to household-based. The Qing state inherited the new arrangement when it
conquered China in 1644.
15
In historical terms, in the case of Qing China, a region corresponds to a province and thus S = 18;
in the case of Tokugawa Japan, the entire Shogunate domain can be seen as just one region and thus
S = 1.
16
For simplicity, we assume away commercial production, but it can be incorporated without changing main results.
17
In historical terms, 18 regions were divided into approximately 1500 jurisdictions in in Qing China(83 tax agents per region), and one region consisted of approximately 50 jurisdictions in the Shogunate
domain in Japan (50 tax agents per region).

13

rate θ from the Peasants, in addition to the official tax rate τ , for his private benefit. As
a result, the effective expropriation rate for the Peasants is τ + θ, creating a potential
wedge between what the Ruler receives and what the Peasants pay.
When the Agent announces τ + θ, the Peasants pay the portion of their outputs
to the Agent as demanded.18 If τ + θ is within an exogenously given rate of r, thenthe Peasants consider it acceptable and stay put. However, if it exceeds r, then the
Peasants deem this “unjust” and revolt. We assume that the Ruler is adversely affectedby peasant rebellion while the Agents are effectively unaffected, as explained below.
To discourage the Agents from engaging in extralegal expropriation, the Ruler employs the following monitoring mechanism. First, the Ruler conducts audits in randomly
selected regions after the Agents finished tax collection. Let A(S) denote the probability of the representative region receiving audits where 0 ≤ A(S) ≤ 1. Due to theRuler’s resource constraints, we assume that the probability of audits decreases with
the number of regions in a dictatorship: A0 (·) < 0.19 In other words, in the absence ofmodern information technologies, the Ruler faces managerial diseconomies of scale.
Next, when an Agent is indicted of misconduct in the auditing process, the Ruler
punishes the Agent by imposing a fine X. Audits, however, detect misconducts only
imperfectly with probability D(θ) where 0 ≤ D(θ) ≤ 1 and D(0) = 0. We assume
that the detection probability increases with the rate of surcharge θ at an increasing
rate, but that the marginal rate of detection is concave in θ: D0 (·) > 0, D00 (·) > 0, andD000 (·) ≤ 0.20 A simple example would be a quadratic function: D(θ) = θ2 .
18

We assume that the tax unit is an individual. Incorporating the village contract system in
Tokugawa Japan in the model would further reduce the monitoring costs for Japanese rulers andstrengthen our results.
19
For simplicity, we use A(·) as the reduced form representation of the Ruler’s auditing strategy. To
endogenize A, suppose the Ruler is free to select the fraction of S regions to audit, but audits are costly
as they consume his time and attention. If the cost of audits is increasing in A · S, the total amount ofaudits conducted, at an increasing rate, and if an interior solution is assumed, then A0 (·) < 0 follows.
20
For simplicity, we use D(·) and X as the reduced form representation of the Ruler’s monitoring
strategy and directly impose assumptions. The above assumptions, however, can be justified as follows.
Suppose that when the Agent collects a surcharge of θ then an audit will reveal a signal θ̂ drawn from anormal distribution N (θ, σ 2 ) bounded between 0 and 1 (i.e., truncated normal distribution). Supposethat the Ruler punishes the Agent whenever θ̂ is greater than some threshold value h. This delivers
the properties D(0) > 0 and D0 (·) > 0. Ignoring corner solutions, it can be further verified that theAgent will never set θ beyond the threshold h, which in turn implies that we can focus on the valuesof θ that correspond to D00 (·) > 0. Moreover, it can be shown that if σ is large enough (i.e., if theRuler’s information is sufficiently noisy), then D000 (·) ≤ 0. Finally, even though the Ruler can choose alevel of fine from a range of possible values, in equilibrium the Ruler will always choose the maximum
level of fine that is consistent with the Agent’s individual rationality constraint, which gives X in our

14

To summarize, the timing of events in the basic single-period game in the representative region is as follows: (1) The Ruler sets a tax rate τ to maximize tax revenue.
(2) The representative Agent selects θ to maximizes his expected payoff and proceeds
to collect taxes. (3) The Peasants pay τ + θ of their outputs to the Agents and decide
whether or not to revolt. (4) The Ruler conducts randomized audits and punishes theAgents if the audits uncover misconducts.
The Representative Agent. To provide benchmark results, we derive the equilibrium of the single-period game. First, consider the optimization problem of therepresentative Agent. The Agent chooses a rate of extralegal surcharge θ to maximize
his expected payoff, given the monitoring mechanism, A(·), D(·), and X:
max v A = θ · Y (N ) − A(S) · D(θ) · X

0≤θ≤1

(3.1)

The optimal rate of surcharge θ∗ is given by the following condition:
Y (N ) = A(S) · D0 (θ∗ ) · X(3.2)

The Ruler. The Ruler chooses a tax rate to maximize tax revenue. In doing so, however, we assume that, unlike the Agents, the Ruler is deeply concerned about peasantrebellion and thus constrained by the no-revolt condition: τ +θ ≤ r. There are two main
reasons why the Ruler is bound by the no-revolt condition while the Agents are not.
First, because peasant rebellion destructs productive capacity and affects future agricultural outputs, it hurts the long-lived Ruler much more than the short-lived Agents.
Second, a rebellion could cause damages also to surrounding jurisdictions. Since theAgents are unable to coordinate their actions across jurisdictions, even if revolts hurt
them, it is individually rational for each Agent to ignore the no-revolt condition insetting θ. By contrast, as the sole dictator governing the entire domain, the Ruler
internalizes externalities across both time and space.
Formally, the Ruler’s maximization problem can be written as:
max v R = τ · Y (N )0≤τ ≤1s.t.

τ +θ ≤rmodel.

15(3.3)

Anticipating the responses by the Agents and the Peasants, the Ruler sets a tax rate
given the optimality condition (3.2) and the no-revolt condition. It is simple to showthat there is a unique equilibrium in the single-period game in which τ ∗ and θ∗ aredetermined by Y (N ) = A(S) · D0 (θ∗ ) · X and τ ∗ + θ∗ = r.
Comparative Statics. To examine the effects of the size of a dictatorship on the
optimal tax and corruption rates, we perform comparative statics with respect to thenumber of regions S. From the optimality condition Y (N ) = A(S) · D0 (θ∗ ) · X and theassumptions A0 (S) < 0 and D00 (θ) > 0, we obtain the following result:∗

Result 1. The equilibrium corruption rate θ∗ is higher in a larger dictatorship: dθ> 0.
dS
From τ ∗ + θ∗ = r, it also follows that:∗< 0.
Result 2. The equilibrium tax rate τ ∗ is lower in a larger dictatorship: dτdS
In other words, assuming that production and monitoring technologies are identicalacross comparable regions in the two dictatorships, the model predicts lower official tax
rates and higher extralegal expropriation rates in Qing China than in Tokugawa Japan.
These results are driven solely by the assumption of managerial diseconomies of scale,
A0 (S) < 0.

3.2

The Dynamic Setup

We now consider a dynamic game (t = 1, 2, 3...) and introduce two additional features. First, to provide a link between tax revenue and the economy, we allow theRuler to spend part of the revenue on a local public good. Second, to study dynamic
implications, we endogenize population and permit the economy to grow.
If the Ruler spends entire tax revenue on non-productive purposes, such as private
consumption or arms race, then from an economic point of view, there is little difference
between taxation and corruption. Suppose, however, that the Ruler may spend part of
the tax revenue on public goods in each region. For simplicity, assume that a random
shock (e.g., natural disaster) hits the representative region at the end of every period.
Assume also that, the Ruler can invest in a public good in the beginning of every period
to prepare for the possible disaster. We consider a local public good (as opposed toa pure public good) that is non-excludable but rivalrous within the region and has no16

spillover effects on other regions. Most infrastructure investments, such as roads, flood
control, fire protection, and famine relief, satisfy these conditions and must be provided
on the regional basis.
Let γt be the level of public good the Ruler provides in period t. Unless the level of
public good investment is sufficiently large relative to the size of the shock, the shock
destroys the region’s economy and terminates the game at the end of period t. LetG(γt ) denote the probability that the region survives the shock and the game continues
into period t + 1 given the investment γt . We assume that the continuation probability
increases with γt but at a diminishing rate: G(0) = 0, G0 (·) > 0, and G00 (·) < 0.21 In
other words, the Ruler now has an incentive to invest in the public good to protect theregional economy from the random shock to secure future tax revenue.22
Next, we model consumption and reproduction decisions of a representative Peasant. Assume that the Peasant lives for just one period, earns income from agricultural
production, and spend his after-tax income on consumption and reproduction to maximize his utility. Let u(ct , nt+1 ) represent the utility the Peasant receives from theconsumption ct and the number of offspring nt+1 produced in period t. Collectively,
nt+1 gives total population in the next period Nt+1 , namely, Nt+1 = Nt · nt+1 . Following
Hansen and Prescott (2002), we assume that the two goods are complements and are
subject to diminishing marginal utility: u1 (.) > 0, u2 (.) > 0, u11 (.) < 0, u22 (.) < 0,
u12 (.) > 0.
The timing of events in the dynamic game in period t (t = 1, 2, 3...) is as follows:(1) The Ruler sets a tax rate τt and public good investment γt . (2) The Representative
Agent selects a rate of extralegal expropriation θt . (3) The Representative Peasant
pays τt + θt of his income to the Agent, makes consumption and reproductive decisions(ct , nt+1 ), and revolts if τt + θt > r . (4) The Ruler conducts randomized audits andfines the Agents if misconducts are detected. (5) Exogenous shock hits the region anddestroys the economy unless γt is sufficiently large; the game continues to the next21

For example, let Wt denote the realization of the shock in period t and assume that the shock
destroys the economy if γt < Wt . Suppose that Wt is the absolute value of a normally distributed
random variable with mean 0 and variance σ 2 . Then, it follows that G(γt ) = F (γt ; 0, σ 2 )−F (−γt ; 0, σ 2 )and thus G(0) = 0, G0 (·) > 0, and G00 (·) < 0.
22More generally, the Ruler may invest in public goods that directly increase the agricultural output
Y in the region. In our model, we consider public goods that only affect the continuation probability
as it immeasurably simplifies the analysis. It is also consistent with the historical observation that the
primary objective of a premodern state was to maintain political and social order but not to promoteeconomic growth per se.

17

period with probability G(γt ).
The Representative Peasant. We derive an equilibrium of the dynamic game by
backward induction.
First, the optimization problem of the representative Peasant in period t is givenby:

max ut = u(ct , nt+1 )(3.4)

ct + nt+1 ≤ [1 − τt − θt ] · yt

(3.5)

ct ,nt+1 >0

s.t.

(Nt )
. Note that yt is exogenous to thewhere individual income is defined by yt = Y NtPeasant even though Nt = Nt−1 · nt , because nt is a decision variable of the previous
generation. From the first order condition and the assumption u12 (.) > 0, it can beshown that the optimal number of offspring n∗t is an increasing function of net
individual income (1 − τt − θt ) · yt .

The Representative Agent. The representative Agent is assumed to be short-lived,
as tax agents are subject to regular rotations. As a result, the maximization problemof the representative Agent is essentially the same as in the single-period game, andthus the optimal rate of extralegal expropriation in period t is given by:
Y (Nt ) = A(S) · D0 (θt∗ ) · X(3.6)

The Ruler. The Ruler is assumed to live for infinitely many periods. He sets thecurrent and future values of (τ, γ) to maximize the expected discounted value of tax
revenue stream. In doing so, we again assume that the Ruler is bound by the no-revolt
condition in every period. Let VtR represent the Ruler’s present value of future revenue
stream in period t. His maximization problem in period t is given by:max

0≤τt+j ≤1,γt+j ≥0

VtR =
s.t.

R
τt · Y (Nt ) − γt + G(γt ) · Vt+1

τt+j + θt+j ≤ r(3.7)∀ j = 0, 1, 2...

The optimal level of public good investment γt is given by the following condition:
18

R∗
=1
G0 (γt∗ ) · Vt+1

(3.8)

In other words, the Ruler invests in the public good up to the level where themarginal return from the investment equals its marginal cost. The higher is the presentR∗value of his future revenue stream Vt+1
, the more willing the Ruler is to invest in the
public good to increase the continuation probability.
The Ruler sets an optimal tax rate, taking the Agent’s optimality condition (3.6)
and the Peasant’s no-revolt condition as given. Because these conditions are the same
as before, the equilibrium tax and corruption rates (τt∗ , θt∗ ) in the dynamic game areagain determined by Y (N ) = A(S) · D0 (θt∗ ) · X and τt∗ + θt∗ = r (t = 1, 2, 3...).
Population Dynamics. We now turn to equilibrium population dynamics. Because
the Peasant’s net income is (1 − r) · yt in the equilibrium and r is a constant, theoptimal number of offspring can be expressed as n∗t+1 = n∗t+1 (yt ), where n∗t+1 (·) is
strictly increasing in yt . This, in turn, provides the population dynamics, because bydefinition:n∗t+1 (yt ) =∗Nt+1
Nt∗ · n∗t+1
=
Nt∗
Nt∗

(3.9)

In the spirit of Malthus, Condition (3.9) implies that the direction and rate of
population growth depends on the Peasant’s per capita income.23 Let y denote theN∗level of income defined by n∗t+1 (y) = Nt+1
∗ = 1. If yt > y then Nt+1 > Nt or populationtwill expand; if yt < y instead then population will contract. Either way, in the longrun, the region’s population will converge to a stationary level N (y) associated withthe steady-state per capita income y (see Figure 4).
3.2.1

Comparative Statics.

We compare the two dictatorships that differ only in the number of regions that they
encompass. In particular, we assume the same initial populations in the representative23

In our model, when making reproduction decisions, individual Peasants do not take into consideration the negative externalities of producing offspring today on the living standard of the next
generation. We assume that even if each Peasant cares about the well-being of his offspring in the next
period, Peasants in the region are unable to act collectively to regulate population growth to attain asocially optimal level of income. As such, individual Peasants take Nt+1 and thus yt+1 as exogenous
and beyond their control.

19

Figure 4: Converging to the Steady State Population Level

regions in the two dictatorships. Recall that the optimal tax rate is higher in a smaller
dictatorship in every period (Result 2). However, since population growth depends noton the official tax rate (τ ) alone, but on the effective expropriation rate (τ + θ), thetwo representative regions will be identical in population size in every period.
dγ ∗Result 3. A larger dictatorship invests less in the public good per region: dSt < 0 ∀ t.
Proof. Suppose that the result does not hold; at some t, γt∗ (Slarge ) ≥ γt∗ (Ssmall ), where∗(Slarge )}∞Slarge > Ssmall . Let {γt+j
1 represent the sequence of public good provision
R(Slarge ) at t. Given Result 2, this sequence is financially feasible forthat maximizes Vt+1
R
the Ruler of the smaller dictatorship to adopt. Let U represent the value of Vt+1
(Ssmall )R∗when he implements this sequence. Let Vt+1
(Ssmall ) represent the maximum attainableR∗R
value of Vt+1 (Ssmall ). By definition, Vt+1 (Ssmall ) ≥ U .
R∗
R∗R∗(Slarge ) must
Result 2 implies that U > Vt+1
(Slarge ). Therefore, Vt+1
(Ssmall ) > Vt+100
hold. The Ruler’s optimality condition (3.8) and the assumption G (·) < 0 then imply
that γt∗ (Slarge ) < γt∗ (Ssmall ). This completes the proof by contradiction.
The intuition is straightforward. When the agency problem is more severe andR∗hence the continuation payoff Vt+1
is lower, then the Ruler has less incentive to invest
in the future of the region. For ease of exposition, we assume that the agency problem
exists only in tax collection but not in public goods provision. Historically, however,
the agency problem in the provision of public goods was a serious concern as shown in
the next section. Relaxing this assumption will only strengthen Result 3.

20

Next, we explore dynamic implications. We focus on the case where the size of
initial population in the region is below the stationary level N (y). According to theequilibrium population dynamics, population will grow until it reaches the steady state
unless interrupted by external shocks. Because aggregate output Y (N ) increases withpopulation, one may expect that the Ruler’s tax revenue also increases with population.
The next result, however, establishes that the Ruler’s revenue first rises and then falls
as the population expands.
Result 4. For any given S, there exists a unique threshold population N̂ (S) such that
the Ruler’s period tax revenue vtR∗ increases with N if N < N̂ (S), and decreases with
N if N > N̂ (S). Moreover, the threshold population N̂ (S) is smaller in a larger dictatorship: dN̂dS(S) < 0.
Proof. From the Agent’s optimality condition Y (N ) = A(S) · D0 (θ∗ ) · X and the assumptions Y (·) > 0, Y 0 (·) > 0, D0 (·) > 0, and D00 (·) > 0, it follows that:dθ∗
Y 0 (N )D0 (θ∗ ) · Y 0 (N )
=
=
>0
dN
A(S) · X · D00 (θ∗ )D00 (θ∗ ) · Y (N )(3.10)

which implies that the equilibrium corruption rate is strictly increasing in population.
Recall that the Ruler’s period tax revenue is given by v R∗ = τ ∗ · Y (N ). Note that∗∗τt∗ + θt∗ = r implies dτ
= − dθ
. Then it follows that:
dN
dN

dv R∗
dN

= τ ∗ · Y 0 (N ) += [τ ∗ −∗dτ ∗· Y (N )dN

D0 (θ∗ )] · Y 0 (N )D00 (θ∗ )0(3.11)∗)
From dθ> 0, D00 (·) > 0 and D000 (·) ≤ 0, DD00(θis strictly increasing in N .24 BecausedN(θ∗ )D0 (θ∗ )
dτ ∗
∗
<
0,
τ
−
is a strictly decreasing function of N . Since Y 0 (·) > 0, the sign ofdN
D00 (θ∗ )
0 ∗)
dv R∗
is determined by the sign of τ ∗ − DD00(θ. Let N̂ (S) be the population level at
dN
(θ∗ )
0
∗
R∗
)
which τ ∗ − DD00(θ= 0. It is simple to verify that dvdN > 0 if population is below N̂ (S),(θ∗ )R∗and dvdN < 0 if population is above N̂ (S).

D000 (·) ≤ 0 is the key assumption (i.e., a sufficient condition) for Results 4 and 5. As shown in the
microfoundation provided in footnote 20, it is satisfied when Ruler’s information is sufficiently noisy.
24

21

0

∗

∗

)
(N̂ )
Finally, note that τ ∗ − DD00(θ= τ ∗ − D00 (θY∗ )·A(S)·X= 0. This and dτ
< 0 (Result(θ∗ )dS2) and the assumptions Y 0 (·) > 0, D000 (·) ≤ 0, and A0 (·) < 0 together imply thatdN̂ (S)< 0.
dS

The above analysis makes it clear that population growth and the resulting economic
expansion has two opposing effects on the Ruler’s tax revenue (see equation 3.11). On
one hand, it enlarges the tax base. On the other hand, it increases the rate of extralegal
expropriation and reduces the fraction of the economic surplus that goes to the Ruler.
Result 4 shows that the latter effect begins to dominate the former once the populationin the region crosses the threshold. What is more, it shows that, the larger is the
dictatorship, the earlier the tipping point where the negative effect of economic growth
dominates the positive effect arrives.
More generally, the following result holds:
Result 5. For any given
 R∗N, economic expansion is less beneficial to the Ruler in a
dv
d
< 0.
larger dictatorship: dS
dN∗∗

Proof. It follows from the equation (3.11), dθ
> 0 (Result 1) and dτ
< 0 (Result 2),
dS
dS
00
000
and the assumptions D (·) > 0 and D (·) ≤ 0.
According to Result 5, at every population level N , the positive effect of economic
growth on the Ruler’s revenue is always larger and the negative effect always smaller
in a smaller dictatorship. In other words, the Ruler in a larger dictatorship gains
consistently less from the economic growth due to greater agency costs.
Two Dynamic Outcomes. For two dictatorships that differ significantly in size, themodel predicts two distinctive outcomes.
In the case of the small dictatorship, as its Ruler is capable of capturing a significant
portion of the economic surplus consistently (Results 2 and 5), he will invest relatively
heavily in the public good (Result 3) to protect the economy from periodic external
shocks. In the absence of extraordinarily large shocks to disrupt the process, populationin every region that he governs will expand until per-capita income falls to y. At thispoint, the economy enters the steady state and will stay there unless large exogenous
shock knocks it out of that state (Figure 5a).
The picture is different in the large dictatorship. In this case, the Ruler’s revenue
begins to fall early while the economy still expands. As fiscal condition worsens, the22

Figure 5: Two Dynamic Outcomes(a) Representative Region in Small Dictatorship(b) Representative Region in Big Dictatorship

Ruler cuts his investment in the public good. His regime could even go bankrupt before
the economy enters the steady state. Here, we observe a clear pattern of dynastic riseand fall. The establishment of the dynasty brings order and stability initially, whichallows economic expansion to take place. However, in a paradoxical manner, the regime
finds itself increasingly incapable of managing the prosperity that it has helped create(Figure 5b).
Our results affirm the conjecture in Usher (1989) that a society under despotic rule
could either evolve into a stationary state or into a dynastic cycle. We show in the next
section that the Tokugawa patterns match the stationary state scenario. The Japanese
population grew steadily between 1600 and the early 1700s, and stayed almost constantfrom then on until 1850. The shogunate’s revenue followed a similar path. By contrast,
China saw an almost uninterrupted population expansion from the 1680s right up to1850. Yet the fiscal capacity of the Qing state began to contract in the first half of the1700s, in a manner that is consistent with the predictions of the second scenario.

4

Empirical Evidence

Assuming that pre-modern China and Japan used similar production and monitoring
technologies, our model predicts lower rates of corruption (Result 1), higher tax rates(Result 2), and higher levels of public goods provision per region (Result 3) in Tokugawa
Japan than in Qing China. The model also predicts that, with economic expansion,
23

the fiscal revenue in the shogunate would likely reach a steady state, while the revenue
in China would hit its peak and begin to fall (Results 4 and 5).
In what follows, we assemble comparable quantitative data from primary and secondary sources to test these predictions. We first discuss the issue of corruption in
China and Japan with respect to Result 1. We then provide further evidence that
Results 2, 4, and 5 are consistent with the fiscal and population patterns observed historically. Finally, we evaluate Result 3 by comparing the provision of key local public
goods.

4.1

Corruption

Corruption, by its very nature, is difficult to measure. However, historical accounts
by contemporary observers suggest that corruption was pervasive and worrisome evenin 18th-century China, when Qing power was at its peak, and the problem worsened in
the 19th century (Mann and Kuhn, 1978; Park, 1997). As noted earlier, high geographic
heterogeneity and multiple commutation rates made it difficult for the Chinese emperor
to monitor local officials.
In the land tax collection process, over-collection (fu-shou) by magistrates and theirunderlings appeared to be endemic (Feng, 1876; Ch’u, 1962; Zelin, 1984). A popularform of fushou involved the manipulation of commutation rates between silver andcopper coins. It was observed that magistrates often demanded taxpayers to pay taxes
in copper coins instead of the officially stipulated silver or grain. These officials would
then set the commutation rate at a level higher than the prevailing market rate (Ch’u,
1962, 142).25
According to Zhang (1962, 32), in early 19th-century China, a magistrate would
typically fetch 30,000 silver taels (7,140 koku of rice) a year through extralegal channels.
By this estimate, the extralegal incomes of the 1500 magistrates (45 million taels) would
have exceeded the annual amount of tax silver that entered the state coffers (40 million
25

To be sure, not all tax surcharges were illegal as some form of over-collection was necessary tocover the costs of tax collection. The Kangxi emperor (r. 1662-1722) once mentioned in private that
he would consider a magistrate who imposed a 10% surcharge an honest official (Ch’u, 1962). His son,the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723-35), legalized the collection of a “silver meltage fee” on top of theregular land tax to help pay for the cost of regional and local administrations. The sanctioned rates
averaged about 12% nationwide (Zelin, 1984). Likewise in Japan, magistrates were initially allowed tocollect a 3% surcharge on the rice tax to finance personnel and other expenses. During the 1720s, theshogun Yoshimune instituted reforms to incorporate these expenses into the official budget.

24

taels in the 1840s).
While bureaucratic graft and corruption was a topic that attracted immense attention in Qing official and scholarly discourse, it was not the case in Japan. Thomas
Smith’s classic on the land tax in Tokugawa Japan spent only one paragraph discussing
corruption, where he noted that “bribes and gifts to tax officials were the main form ofillegal exaction, but it is doubtful that they bulked large in the total economic burdenof the village” (Smith, 1958, 9). Political and intellectual elites in Tokugawa Japan
appear to be more concerned with other issues such as the rise of the merchant classand the declining economic status of the ruling samurai class (Totman, 1993).
In one of the worst corruption cases in the Tokugawa period, 3 magistrate assistants
were found to have collected 3000 ryo of bribes, or 8.2% of the total output, from
taxpayers in Tanimura of Koshu in the 1830s (Nishizawa, 2004).26 More generally,
Teranishi Takamoto, a magistrate during Tokugawa times, observed in the 1790s thatfor a 50,000 koku territory, the peasants’ non-tax burden was typically about 600 ryo, or
1.2% of the output.27 By comparison, Ni and Van (2006) have estimated that corruption
consumed 22% of China’s agricultural output in 1873.

4.2

Tax Rate

The model predicts a lower tax rate in the larger dictatorship (Result 2). It further
predicts that tax rates will decline with population growth, but at a faster rate in thelarger dictatorship. Assuming that per capita output was comparable between China
and Japan, per capita tax revenue is a proxy for tax rate. As shown in Figure 1, percapita tax revenue was consistently higher in the Tokugawa shogunate than in China.
Furthermore, per capita tax revenue fell over time in both regimes, but at a faster rate
in China.
Intra-country comparisons within China as well as within Japan provide further evidence in support of Result 2. Sng (2010) has shown that the Qing state collected more
26

The Koshu area had a assessed output of 222,000 koku and was governed by 3-5 magistrates.
Assuming that there were 5 magistrates each governing an identical subregion, Tanimura’s assessed
output would be 44,400 koku. The official conversion rate of rice-to-gold was 1.1 in 1835 (Iwahashi,1981).
27
This is an upper-bound estimate of the corruption-to-output ratio: Takamoto estimated that outof the surcharges of 500-600 ryo, 100-200 ryo would be spent on paying for maintaining and repairing
the local office, and the remaining 400 ryo on bribing or entertaining local officials (Nishizawa, 2004).
The official conversion rate was 1 ryo-koku in 1794 (Iwahashi, 1981).

25

taxes in regions closer to the capital where the imperial court could monitor the tax
officials better. Although fiscal information on the smaller Japanese domains is fragmented, existing evidence suggests that tax rates were higher outside the shogunate(Nakabayashi, 2012). Compared to an average tax rate of 34% in the Tokugawa shogunate, the lord of Aizu taxed his peasants at 50-55% between 1637 and 1764 (Furushima,1963). In Choshu domain, agricultural outputs were taxed at an average rate of 40%
in 1840 (Nishikawa, 1985). As Figure 6 illustrates, tax rates in Kumamoto were also
higher than those in the shogunate (Miyamoto, 2004; Hosokawa Hanseishi Kenkyuukai,1974).
Figure 6: Tax Rate(a) Tokugawa shogunate(b) Kumamoto domain

Sources: Ohno (1996); Miyamoto (2004); Hosokawa Hanseishi Kenkyuukai (1974).

Importantly, unlike the case in early modern Europe where “war made the state andthe state made war” (Tilly, 1975), high tax rates in Japan were not driven by interstatecompetition. Tokugawa Japan was an extraordinary era of peace. In the two centuries
after the Shimabara rebellion (1637-38), no major armed incident occurred. Until theWest forced Japan to open up in the 1850s, tensions between the shogunate and local
domains were never high enough to make war a real possibility.

4.3

Population Growth and Fiscal Change

According to demographic trends, the Tokugawa era can be divided into two subperiods. From 1600 to the early 1700s, population grew from 12 million to 30 million
26

Figure 7: Population(a) Japan (Entire country)(b) China Proper

Figure 8: Aggregate Tax Revenue (Real)(a) Japan (Tokugawa shogunate only)(b) China Proper

Sources: See Figure 1.

and towns and cities proliferated. From 1700 to 1850, however, Japan’s population
stayed at around 30 million (Figure 7a). As Figure 8a shows, aggregate tax revenueof the shogunate evolved in tandem with population change: land tax revenues grewsteadily before the early 18th century, and stayed more or less flat afterwards.
In China proper, the population expanded steadily from the late 1600s to around
1850 (Figure 7b). However, the Qing state’s tax revenue peaked in the first half of the27

18th century and tailed off from then on (Figure 8b). Ironically—but consistent with
Result 4—the turning point occurred in the midst of the High Qing Period, when the
Chinese economy was expanding steadily and interregional trade was flourishing (Shiueand Keller, 2007).
According to Figure 8, even though the Qing state collected less taxes per capita,
its aggregate tax revenue remained far greater than that of the Tokugawa shogunate
throughout the period. If we assume that a ruler maximizes aggregate tax revenue andnot per capita revenue, then it might have been perfectly rational for the Qing emperor
to prefer to govern a large empire.

4.4

Provision of Local Public Goods

Finally, we compare the provision of the following local public goods by the statein China and Japan: (1) coinage, (2) transportation network, (3) urban management,(4) forest protection, and (5) famine relief (Table 1). Note that these local public
goods were non-excludable but rivalrous, and served a wide region. Unlike local public
goods that serve local communities (e.g., small-scale irrigation projects), these goods
must be provided and managed at the regional level. As informal institutions based on
repeated interactions alone cannot sustain cooperation when the number of players islarge (Kandori, 1992), there is a role for the state to play to ensure that these public
goods are adequately provided.
Table 1: Public Goods Provision in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan(1) Coinage
Annual Output of Copper Coins, aggregate
Annual Output of Copper Coins, per capita(2) Length of Trunk Roads (km)Length per ’00 sq. km(3) Urban Population (Urbanization Rate)(4) Forest Cover (million ha)

China

Japan

Copper only
3,639,800k (1756-65)
15 (1756-65)

Gold, Silver, Copper
1,096,000k (1764-88)
35 (1764-88)

11,370 (Imperial Routes)

1,440 (Gokaido)

0.26

0.51 or 3.37

20.5m (5.8%)

5.1m (16.5%)

18.5 (1700) → 9.6 (1850)

27 (1600) → 25.5 (1850)(Lingnan region only)(5) Grain Stockpile per capita (husked rice, koku)

0.030 (1843)
0.046 (1843)
Sources: (1) Lin (2006) and Tsuchiya and Yamaguchi (1972); (2) DQHD (Yongzheng edition) and Vaporis(1994); (3) Rozman (1973, Table 5); (4) Saito (2009); (5) Eto (1970); Yoshida (1991); Wang (1890);
Will and Wong (1991); Li and Jiang (2008).

28

4.4.1

Coinage

The circulation of good quality, standardized coins helps to reduce the cost of every
day transactions. The Tokugawa shogunate produced gold, silver, and copper coins.
The Chinese state minted copper coins only. In the absence of a reliable governmentissued large-denomination currency, the Chinese used silver bullion and foreign denominated silver coins for large transactions. As Deng (2008) put it, “China’s silver stock
was made of a collage of pieces in just about all shapes, sizes and qualities under thesun”.
Lin (2006) suggests that even in its heyday, the Qing state did not produce enoughcopper coins to satisfy the needs of its growing population. As a result, it had to tolerate
the use of counterfeit coins to relieve currency scarcity. When the output of the Qing
mints peaked between 1756 and 1765, national production reached 3640 million pieces
annually, or 15 pieces of copper coins per head. By comparison, the shogunate produced
1096 million pieces of copper coins annually between 1764 and 1788, or 35 pieces perhead (Table 1).28
4.4.2

Transportation Network

The Tokugawa period witnessed the development of an extensive road network nationwide. The shogunate built a system of five major highways (Gokaido), centered on
Edo (Figure 3). Local lords, too, constructed roads and bridges to facilitate the flow ofgoods from rural areas to their castle towns (Yamamoto, 1993).29
The shogunate also built a coastal transportation network to bring personnel andgoods to Edo (Yamamoto, 1993). Coastal waters were charted and lighthouses built toguide ships through the rocky coastline. In the 1670s, the shogunate established two
shipping routes—the eastern sea circuit and the western sea circuit (Figure 3)—that
together formed a complete loop surrounding the main island of Honshu and loweredtransport costs (Nakai and McClain, 1998, 164-5).
28

The shogunate monopolized coinage production in Japan. As such, we divide its coin output by
the population of entire Japan instead of the shogunate’s population only.
29
Historical accounts suggest that the quality of these roads was high by the standards of its day.
The Swedish doctor Charles Thunberg observed in 1776 that “the roads in this country are broad, andfurnished with two ditches, to carry off the water, and [are] in good order all the year round”. On theeve of Meiji Restoration, the Swiss envoy Aime Humbert commented that “compared with the greatroads of Europe, the Tokaido is not the least bit inferior” (Vaporis, 1994, 39-44).

29

By contrast, the Chinese rulers did relatively little to improve its transport infrastructure. With the notable exception of trade along the Grand Canal, most long
distance trade was carried out among regions either well served by natural inland waterways or along the coast. Schran (1978) observes that “as a rule, the rivers and lakes
were not made more passable for boats by the removal of obstacles such as rocks, silt,
and debris, by the dredging or marking of channels, by the construction of two paths,
etc”, and “the Chinese people adapted to this limited involvement of the government
in communication by ‘struggling’ on their own (individually or in groups) against thenatural elements as well as each other”.
In Table 1, we use the length of trunk roads as a crude measure of state investment inland transportation. The Qing imperial postal system, which the imperial court relied
on to maintain communications with the rest of the country, was about 13,770 km long,or eight times the length of the Gokaido (Figure 2). However, this implies a trunk roaddensity (length divided by domain size, in km per 100 km2 ) of only 0.26, compared to3.37 in the shogunate if we assume that the Gokaido served only the shogunate domain.
Even if we divide the length of the Gokaido by the whole of Japan, the resulting roaddensity, at 0.51, would still be twice that of China.
4.4.3

Urban Management

The state played an active role in Japan’s urban expansion. Local lords transformed
their castles into towns as they strove to expand their tax base (McClain, 1980). As
these castle towns grew, their rulers imposed detailed regulations and devised new
systems of urban administration (Nakai and McClain, 1998). For example, after a
big fire in 1657, the shogunate created open spaces in Edo to serve as fire breaks(Hanley, 1987). Professional fire-fighting units were set up and watch towers werebuilt.30 Measures were also taken to ensure that waste materials were properly recycled
or disposed, and streets and waterways were kept clean and open in Edo as well as in
the smaller towns and cities (Hanley, 1987).
Contrary to Max Weber’s claim that a heavy state presence in Chinese cities stifled
China’s economic development, formal administration penetrated far less in Chinese
cities than in Japanese ones (Rozman, 1973). Over 95% of the towns and cities in30

According to Engelbert Kaempfer, a German physician who visited Japan between 1690 and 1692,
it was common to see fire police patrolling the streets and equipments such as water-filled buckets andfire axes being placed at prominent intervals in Japanese cities (Kaempfer and Beatrice, 1999).

30

early modern China did not have a permanent bureaucratic presence (Zelin, 2004).
Furthermore, the Qing administration made no distinction between cities and rural
areas. As a result, China had a less developed urban infrastructure than in Japan(Mosk, 2011). A Chinese scholar observed in the early 20th century that “the hundredand one undertakings, such as roads, streetlights, removal of rubbish, water supply,
school system, police, fire protection, etc., which people of the West are accustomed
to regard as functions of a municipal government are, with a few exceptions of recent
date, never undertaken by the proper government officials” (Rowe, 1989, 135).
Rozman (1973) calculated that in 1800, Japan’s urbanization rate (16.5%) was morethan twice that of China (5.5%), and “the most urbanized province of China [Zhili] wasconsiderably less urban than the least urbanized region of Japan [Tohoku]” (Table
1c). Some scholars have pointed out that conventional measures of urbanization may
have underestimated China’s true level of urbanization, for these measures overlook
the proliferation of small market towns in early modern China (Li, 2000; Brandt et al.,2011). Our comparative analysis shows that the lack of state leadership in solving urban
collective action problems may help to explain why, instead of seeing its largest cities
growing, China’s “urbanization” took such a unique path.
4.4.4

Forest Preservation

Population growth and urbanization brought about rapid deforestation in 17thcentury Japan. By the mid-17th century, few prime forests were still in existence.
The shogun and local lords responded by issuing regulations to restrict entry into
forests and clearance of woodland for cultivation. Over time, they created new administrative bodies (e.g. the Kinai Office of Erosion Control) and positions (e.g. forest
magistrates) to enforce the regulations, demanded the compilation of forest registers to
track illegal logging, set up inspection points along rivers and roads to detect smugglers,and implemented sumptuary rules to prohibit the use of precious timber on “wasteful”
activities.31 Attempts were also made to delineate the boundaries between domains aswell as between villages to avoid “the tragedy of commons”. Finally, the shogunate andsome domains promoted reforestation programs actively (Totman, 1989).
Early modern China, too, experienced rapid deforestation (Elvin, 2004). Like theJapanese rulers, the Qing emperor was acutely aware of the problem. When flash floods
31

For example, in 1706, the shogunate banned the use of large pine trees as New Year’s decorations.

31

caused by excessive land reclamation plagued the upper-middle reaches of the Yangzi
River in the second half of the 18th century, it intervened spontaneously. However,its efforts were thwarted by corruption and inefficient administration. Zhang (2006)
observes that the government’s attempt to issue regulations to guide dike management
and throw resources at the problem was unsuccessful and “money was wasted on a
top-heavy, inefficient, and corrupt bureaucracy” (p. 100).32 According to McCaffrey(2003), the Qing state’s inability to manage the rivalry among local communities in theregion was a major contributing factor to the White Lotus Rebellion in 1796.
Saito (2009) provides a quantitative measure to compare environmental preservation
outcomes in China and Japan. Between 1600 and 1850, the estimated woodland area inJapan fell from 27 million hectares to 25.5 million hectares, and the movement between
the two time points followed a U-shaped trajectory: forest cover first contracted sharply
before rebounding. In Lingnan, a region in South China that “share[d] much the same
flora and climate” as Japan, forest-covered area almost halved from 18.3 million hectares
in 1700 to 9.6 million hectares in 1850.
4.4.5

Famine Relief

For agrarian societies, crop failures could undermine social stability. To mitigate
this threat, the Qing emperors built a nationwide system of public granaries known
as the ever-normal granaries (changpingcang). Located in the provincial, prefectural,and county capitals, these granaries were managed by the local magistrates and were
expected to perform two main functions: famine relief in natural disasters and pricesmoothing in normal times (buying low and selling high) (QSG, juan 121).
The size and frequency of the Qing state’s granary operations reached a peak inthe mid-18th century and by the 1780s the system was on a path of decline (Willand Wong, 1991). Corruption was considered to be a main factor. In 1781, a majorembezzlement case was exposed in the northwestern province of Gansu, where provincial
officials conspired to falsely report droughts and carry out phantom relief operations.
In 1792, when Emperor Qianlong instructed the governor-general of Zhili to provide
relief to famine-stricken areas, he found out that the province’s reported grain reserve
was grossly inflated and it had no capacity to execute his order (QSL, QL juan 1417).
32

Similar situations were observed elsewhere. In the Hunan province, Perdue (1987) argues that itwas not a lack of awareness of the problem but “the state’s limited impact on the society” that doomed
the Qing government’s efforts to reverse the trend of ecological degradation there.

32

In Japan, the shogunate established a nationwide system of rice stockpile in 1633
in which a fixed amount of rice was stored in over 50 castles in various domains formilitary and emergency purposes (Yanagitani, 1985, 1989). During the Tenmei famine
in 1732, the shogunate used this system to send a large volume of rice to disaster areasand successfully contained the damage (Yanagitani, 1985; Kikuchi, 1997). The same
system, however, proved inadequate in coping with the much greater Tenmei famine
in 1783-1786, which resulted in heavy casualties in northern domains and major riots
in Osaka and Edo. Not to repeat the dismal experience, the shogunate set up a nonmilitary granaries modeling after China and (1) ordered magistrates to create village
granaries and store 0.1% of rice output (0.2% for other grains) throughout the shogunate
domain; (2) established ever-normal granaries in major cities; and (3) ordered local lords
to build granaries in their domains and store 2.5% of rice output (Ando, 2000).33
The new granaries complemented the existing ones and played a major role in mitigating the impacts of the Tempo famine in 1832-1837 especially in Edo (Yoshida, 1991;
Kikuchi, 1997). Right after the famine, the shogunate ordered local lords to stock
additional 2.5% of rice output in their granaries (Ando, 2000).
Although data are scarce, our estimates indicate that the amount of emergency
reserve increased steadily from 1750 to 1850 in Japan, reflecting the successive reforms.
In the shogunate domain, the amount of reserve, measured in husked rice, grew fromless than 300,000 koku in 1751 to 368,000 koku in 1843, and to 555,000 koku in 1861;
in per capita terms, it rose from less than 0.038 koku in 1751 to 0.046 koku in 1843,
and to 0.068 koku in 1861.34
In China, the amount of grain stockpiles in public granaries increased initially from
14.7 million koku in 1751 to 17.0 million koku in 1782, but declined subsequently to
33

Many local lords also instituted various forms of granaries on their own initiatives (Kikuchi, 1997).
These estimates are derived using the following data and assumptions (complete descriptions areavailable from the authors upon request). The amount of rice reserves is a sum of (1) rice stockpiles inthe shogunate domain (bakuryo shirozume-mai ), (2) the shougnate- funded portion of village granaries(gokura), and (3) the city granaries (machikaisho) in Edo and Osaka funded primarily by the shogunate.
Data for 1751 are based on Yanagitani (1985) and Iijima (2004). Data for 1843 are drawn from historical
record, Zenkoku Chokoku Aridaka, reproduced in Eto (1970), and from Yoshida (1991). Data for 1861
comes from the historical document, Okinginkome Aridaka Kakitsuke, reproduced in Ohno (2008), as
well as from Yoshida (1991) and Iijima (2004). To produce lower bound estimates, we assume thatthe rice reserves in the shogunate domain served not only the shogunate domain, but also the fiefs of
his vassals (hatamoto). We further assume that the population of the shogunate domain and vassal
territories made up 25% of the total population in Japan. Granaries were held in the form of husked
rice (kome) as well as unhusked rice (momi), grains, and cash. We only include rice in our estimates
to be conservative and use the standard rate of 0.5 to convert unhusked rice into husked rice.
34

33

11.9 million koku in 1843, and to 10.3 million koku in 1850. In per capita terms, itdeclined from 0.065 koku in 1751 to 0.060 koku in 1782, and fell further to 0.030 koku
in 1843 and to 0.025 koku in 1850.35
In other words, while the Qing emperor had higher capacity to provide famine relief
than the Tokugawa shogun in the mid-18th century, their positions were reversed by
the mid-19th century, which is consistent with our theoretical predictions.36

5Conclusion

In this paper, we provide a comparative and historical institutional analysis of state
capacity in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan. Theoretically and empirically, we showthat the extraordinary geographic size of China imposed increasingly insurmountable
constraints on the regime’s capacity to collect tax and provide essential local public
goods as its economy expanded. It is our conjecture that this factor alone might havebeen sufficient in derailing China from a path of sustained economic growth even in theabsence of Western imperialism.
In contrast, aided partly by its geographic compactness, the Tokugawa regime wasable to perform basic functions and thereby maintained domestic peace for a much
longer period than the Chinese regime did.37 Our findings are much in line with newstudies that show that financial conditions of the shogunate and other local lords inthe late Tokugawa period were not as dire as many historians have believed (Ito, 2011;
Nakabayashi, 2012).
It has long been argued that the development paths of China and Japan diverged
35

We arrive at the estimates for China based on the following data and assumptions (complete
descriptions are available upon request). The amount of grain reserves is the sum of grain stockpiledin (1) non-military state granaries outside Beijing, (2) state granaries in Beijing, and (3) military
granaries. Data for (1) are drawn from Will and Wong (1991, Table A.2), and (2) from Li and Jiang(2008). For (3), due to the paucity of historical data, we derive our estimates based on the following
assumptions: the Wenzhou standard of storing 2 shi of unhusked rice per soldier (Wang, 1890) was
observed nationally; the Qing military stood at 800,000 soldiers throughout the period considered.
Because rice was the most valuable grain, to obtain an upper bound estimate, we assume that all
grains in the granaries were rice.
36
Accounting for the likelihood that the 19th-century Chinese figures were over-reported by the
local officials would only strengthen our result.
37
Japan maintained 215 years of uninterrupted domestic peace between the suppression of the
Shimabara Rebellion in 1638 and the arrival of the Black Ships in 1856. By contrast, domestic peacesustained for only 103 years in China between the Annexation of Taiwan in 1683 and the Lin Shuangwen
Uprising in 1786.

34

after 1868 because of the rise of a more proactive government in Japan during the
Meiji Restoration (Beasley, 1972; Ma, 2004). In this paper, we show that the original
divergence of their state capacity occured before 1850, due to the much higher agency
costs that China faced. We conjecture that Japan’s greater state capacity might have
prepared it better for the arrival of the West. In other words, we see the proactive Meiji
government as a product of Japan’s history, not a radical break from the past.

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