AMER.MACRO: The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship

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                ABSTRACTS IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
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Name: Robert A. McGuire
Email: rmcguire@uakron.edu
Institution: University of Akron

Co-author: T. Norman Van Cott
Department of Economics
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306

Title: The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship

Internet Address of abstracted work: not available

By mail:
Department of Economics
University of Akron
Akron, Ohio 44325-1908
USA

Language: English

Abstract:
This paper offers an example of a national constitution, that of the
Confederate States of America, which effectively constrained its
fiscal authorities to tax rates on the lower end of the Laffer curve.
The taxes were Confederate import tariffs. Heretofore, much of the
literature revolving around the Laffer relationship has focused on
who understood the relationship before Arthur Laffer's name was
attached to it. Drawing on primary sources, the paper documents the
role that this de facto capping of tariff rates played in the
drafting of the Confederate Constitution. That the Laffer
relationship found constitutional expression for a tax that was
expected to be a major source of government revenue more than a
century before Laffer's "insight" represents a substantive
contribution to the literature, and is suggestive that the tariff
might have played even more of a role in the North-South conflict
than currently acknowledged.

Bibliography: McGuire, Robert A. and T. Norman Van Cott. "The
Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship."
Working paper, University of Akron, 2001.

Subject: I
Geographical Area: 7
Country/Region: United States
Time Period: 7

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