Talk:Fiscal capacity

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Vivianliu94. Peer reviewers: Mfekade1366, Shenqiu92.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Some comments

Hi, Vivianliu94. Thanks for writing this article. I think you've got a lot of important information here and you've covered (what seems to me to be) a good outline of the topic. My only major recommendation is that you simplify some of the sentences, especially in the latter paragraphs. I know this is a complex topic and it is important to fairly and precisely represent the voices on it, but compound-complex sentences--like the snarl of one I'm navigating now--can make it harder for a reader to get a comfortable handle on the topic.

I would also recommend condensing and reframing the article to focus on what you want the reader to come away with. I find this helps a bit: look at each of your paragraphs and try to determine the core ideas you need to get across to your audience. Let's take the two paragraphs starting from "Richer and more developed countries have larger..." as an example. I see:

• Richer countries can raise more revenue and this corresponds with a higher fiscal capacity.
• They can not only raise more money they can do so more efficiently for a variety of reasons
• Optimal taxation theory suggests that the kinds of taxes these states tend to raise are more efficient
• But this general theory has some problems, namely some obvious lurking variables.
  • rich countries have institutions which make certain forms of taxation contribute more or less to fiscal capacity

The next paragraph goes on to discuss the important and recent developments in that discussion but in doing so repeats some of the points above. I've broken the article out a bit. I hope the above helps. Let me know if you need more (or more specific) info. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:54, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Adam (Wiki Ed). Thanks very much for your useful comments! I have one question on behalf of the class--how did you generate the "Find link" tool? We tried for instance, to search "https://edwardbetts.com/find_link/Jeffrey_Herbst" and nothing was available; is there a process to generate the 'find link tool results' for each article that it's used for? Please let me know. Thanks Vivianliu94 (talk) 15:02, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the tool you've linked, Vivianliu94; it's the first time I've seen it. What tool or function on Wikipedia are you referring to? Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:45, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Adam (Wiki Ed); This was added to the top of my page: "" The 'Find look tool' links to the edwardbetts.com tool that I mentioned earlier. Vivianliu94 (talk) 22:17, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

That tag was left by a bot, an automated script looking for pages with few incoming links from other articles to this one. I've never actually clicked on that find links tool in 8 years on wikipedia! All you have to do to clear that tag is insert links to this page where appropriate. You're a better judge of that than a bot, so I would ignore the output of that tool. If you're linking text already on the page, that's good. A sentence or clause to insert "fiscal capacity" should both have a reference and be germane to the article. Once you've wikilinked 2 or more pages to this one you can remove the tag yourself. Or, if you don't, the tag can stay on indefinitely with no impact on the article. It's there to alert someone reading it who is an editor that they can improve the encyclopedia as a whole by adding links. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:52, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Adam (Wiki Ed)! I have quite a few wikilinks throughout, so I think I'll remove the tag. Vivianliu94 (talk) 16:55, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

New Revision/Structure

I just made a revision to the framework/structure of the page on Fiscal Capacity, and added sections "Definitions and Patterns", "Fiscal Capacity in Practice (subsections: Administration, Tax Structure", and "Origins (subsection: War)". What remains is another subsection on Elites, and another section on Relationship to State Building. Notes on Elites and an overall structure are below:

1. Definitions and Patterns 2. Fiscal Capacity in Practice A. Administration B. Tax Structure 3. Origins Elites

• Scholars emphasize incentives and goals of elites to build state and fiscal capacity, and how the transition of power from elites to the general population influences fiscal capacity.
• Kaldor (1963) emphasizes the difference between development experts that focus on incentives rather than on resources.
• "What limits the ability to tax are incentive constraints tied to asymmetric information, or perhaps political motives, rather than the mere administrative capabilities of the state" (Besley & Persson, 2011). <br
• goals of elite are consistent with Johnson & Koyama's (2015) explanation of lessons learned from economic history in current public finance economics: "stronger fiscal and legal institutions can lead to economic development, [but] it is not so clear where the support for these institutions comes from initially. Frequently it is the private-order institutions--such as family alliances, religious organizations, or informal trade networks--which from the bases around which public-order institutions are eventually built." (Johnson & Koyama, 2015)

War 4. Relationship to State-building A. Coevolution with other things B. Relationship to democratization C. Relationship with Economic Development

Vivianliu94 (talk) 06:38, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Various MOS fixes

Very sorry for the disturbance and the revert – I would like to explain some of my edits here.

• MOS:HEAD: headings should follow sentence case.
• MOS:OVERLINK: links should generally only appear once in the text (exceptions: "in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead").
• MOS:DASH: "--" is discouraged as a "typewriter approximation".
• Forming plurals with wikilinks (e.g., trees) is fine and does not necessitate <nowiki></nowiki> tags. An easier way to use bold/italics with single quotes is the use of {{'}}.
• The article is no longer an orphan, as there are more than zero links to it.
• A revert + merge was easier to do than redoing all these edits.

I'm not quite sure if this was intended as a revert or simply a copy-paste, but I hope these explanations will suffice as justification to keep the previous edits in the article. Also, I would like to create a redirect for "Fiscal Capacity" (since article titles are case-sensitive, linking to "Fiscal Capacity" currently results in a red link). Is that all right? Me, Myself & I (☮) (talk) 21:40, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Me, Myself, and I are Here. Thanks very much! I didn't quite understand how to revert/merge and I wasn't aware of the other wiki-practices, so I really appreciate your pointing that out for me. Vivianliu94 (talk) 02:57, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

No problem, Vivianliu94. Don't worry too much about knowing everything about the policies and guidelines – there are so many, even experienced editors get tripped up on them. The Manual of Style alone is a behemoth. (If you'd like to read it, this help page explains how to perform reversions (I used Twinkle).) I've also went ahead and made the redirect. Good luck on your project! Me, Myself & I (☮) (talk) 03:25, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

General comments

Hi, Vivianliu94. This was an impressive effort given that you had to start from nothing and tackle an important but challenging topic. My main comment is that it's sometimes difficult to tell what points you are trying to convey, and that you sometimes make simple points in complicated language. Adam (Wiki Ed) made a similar comment, and I imagine you have been working on it, but this is an important skill to hone.

• The lede
  • It could say more about why fiscal capacity is important--that it is a fundamental function of states, that without it states are weak, and that improving fiscal capacity is one of the key elements of state-building for this reason. I believe Besley and Persson among others you cite make this point persuasively.
  • Currently the second paragraph of the lede is a bit confusing. It's not clear what you are trying to say.
• Fiscal capacity in practice
  • It's not clear to me what you're trying to accomplish in this section. The headings and subheadings could be more descriptive, and the paragraphs better organized to tell a reader exactly what s/he is getting. For example, are you trying to say that large informal economies are a feature of low fiscal capacity? I'm not sure why that topic belongs in the same section as a discussion of Administration.
  • Instead of titling a subsection Economic models of tax evasion, why not title it Reasons why countries cannot easily raise taxes? Should this be a subsection not a sub-subsection?
  • The discussion of the Gordon and Li paper seems unnecessarily complicated. They make a simple point (as I understand your analysis): when the financial sector (banks) work better, organizations have an incentive to use them, and this makes them easier to tax
• Origins
  • This heading and the subheadings, such as Incentives and Constraints, are not very descriptive. To be honest I'm not sure of the point you are trying to make in the incentives and constraints subsection
  • The war section is clearer
• Other readings
  • The article seems to lean very heavily on Besley and Persson's work.
  • If you or another were going to develop this further (optional of course), you might talk about David Stasavage or Ken Scheve on the [historical development] of tax and credit systems. Another topic of interest is [how natural resources or foreign aid might undermine the incentives to increase fiscal capacity]
• Some smaller points
  • Key authors you raw on, such as Besley and Persson, both have Wikipedia entries. You should link to these and maybe link their pages to this one.
  • A few other pages link here, but you should consider linking from more, including pages related to the authors or books you discuss (such as Tilly).
  • The page could use a "See Also" section

Chrisblattman (talk) 03:10, 9 May 2016 (UTC)