State Capacity as an Organizational Problem
作为组织问题的国家能力
Abstract We investigate how technologies that reduce the costs of monitoring by central authorities have shaped the historical transition from small patrimonial states to large bureaucratic organizations. Our analysis is based on a novel dataset that traces changes in the organizational structure and geographic presence of the U.S. federal government over the 19th century. To identify causal effects, we develop a new identification strategy that exploits the expansion of the…