Fiscal Debate Research Articles

Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS): A look beyond nearly 30 years of controversy at what it does and doesn't tell us about Scotland

Government Expenditure Revenue Scotland (GERS) remains a controversial statistical publication on Scotland’s public finances. We trace the evolution of GERS over time, and track how it has been used in political debate since it was first published in 1992. Now in its 27th edition, we review its ongoing role in informing constitutional and fiscal debate in Scotland. We dispel some of the myths about the publication, but also highlight legitimate criticisms, and explore how it is used by both sides in the independence debate. Our main contribution is to summarise what GERS tells us – and crucially what it does not tell us – about the state of Scotland’s economy and public finances. We conclude with an assessment of what GERS might tell us about the prospects for any future debate on Scottish independence.

The United Artists Collection: The Acquisition and Contested Value of Archival Materials

The United Artists CollectionThe Acquisition and Contested Value of Archival Materials Thomas Brami (bio) For the past fifty years, researchers have traveled to Wisconsin to utilize one of the most pertinent archival collections related to Hollywood cinema: the United Artists Collection (UAC). Housed at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR), the collection documents the United Artists (UA) legal and financial operations from the company's star-controlled phase (1919–51), and it also contains a large number of film materials, including the Warner, RKO, and Monogram Film libraries and the Ziv Television Library. The UAC's unique materials have been invaluable to researchers and institutions interested in studio-era Hollywood and have played an integral role in the dissemination and preservation of American moving image heritage and film history. Yet there remains a dearth of literature on the histories of such important collections, despite the appearance of scholarship in recent years that [End Page 187] has widened the scope of historiographical writing in media studies to include histories of film preservation practices.1 This article contributes to the scholarship on preservation by documenting the history of a particular collection, while at the same time revealing the politics underpinning the collection and the preservation movement more broadly. The first section articulates the network of historical factors that enabled the UAC's acquisition between 1968 and 1970. These factors include the efforts of Tino Balio (the center's director in 1968), the existing relationships between studios and cultural institutions, the heightened presence of heritage discourse in American culture, and studios' financial incentives for making donations to cultural institutions as tax deductions for the amount of the materials' "self-created value." In the second section, this article traces the dramatic history of the collection's contested value. For almost twenty years, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Transamerica (UA's corporate owners) competed to minimize and maximize the allowable amount for deductions. In the final showdown, in a court case in 1988, both sides attached strikingly different amounts to the collection's value. The IRS would allow deductions to the amount of $56,451 for the university property, while Transamerica, on the other hand, claimed that the donation was worth $5,828,041—more than one hundred times what the IRS would allow.2 What accounted for such radically different valuations? I argue that, broadly speaking, the IRS and Transamerica focused on different kinds of value to justify their appraisals: Transamerica focused on the collection's research value and its significance for American heritage, while the IRS focused on the collection's value to collectors of movie memorabilia. Seven different appraisals of the donation materials were conducted over the course of these legal disputes, but the different logic each side used to account for the collection's value in the court case of 1988 was established in their very first appraisals in 1968 and 1973, respectively. However, although they held on to their claim that the materials were significant for American heritage, by the court case of 1988, Transamerica had adjusted its logic to accord more with the logic of the IRS. The court also tried to assume a middle-ground position by awarding an amount closer to Transamerica's claim but argued that it was the collectors' market that gave the material commercial value and denied tax deductions for materials donated after the Tax Reform Act of 1969, which disallowed tax deductions for properties' "self-created value." In the final section, I demonstrate how the court's decision in 1988 reaffirms this law's greatest inequities and problems. I draw from testimonies that illustrate the Tax Reform Act's impact on donations to charitable institutions in the years immediately following 1970 and demonstrate the ways in which they have removed incentives for [End Page 188] archival giving and participated in a general shift toward the privatization of the arts. By placing this discussion alongside the legal and fiscal debates that followed Transamerica's donation to the WCFTR, I examine the ways that the value placed on archival materials has transformed over time alongside this shift toward privatization. In this regard, this study illuminates multiple institutional relationships that determine...

THE UNITED STATES AND THE FISCAL DEBATE IN BRITAIN, 1873–1913

ABSTRACTHistorians of the debate over free trade and tariffs in Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have not taken adequate account of the impact of the protectionist United States. The article first examines how American protectionism influenced the cause of imperial preference. It then looks at how both sides in the fiscal debate used the American economic experience to bolster their cases. Finally, it is demonstrated that the economic success and liberal democratic character of America compelled free traders to attack the American example on a moral and political basis.

The transformation of fiscal reform: reciprocity, modernization, and the fiscal debate within the business community in early twentieth century Britain

ABSTRACTThe debate over Free Trade was central to modem British history. This essay shifts attention from party politics to the changing discourse and perception of state and economy within the business community. It distinguishes three phases in the erosion of liberal political economy: reciprocity, defensive tariff reform, and modernizing protectionism. An analysis of the changing argument for protection points to the emergency of a new politico-economic settlement in the age of war and coordinated capitalism. The Free Trade culture of individualism and market was displaced by a new economic vision of combination and regulation. In political culture, however, state and economy continued to be viewed as separate spheres. Instead of a corporatist system, the new settlement between state and business was marked by a dissociation of economic from political pluralism.

Policy issues and fiscal debate: American agricultural transport needs

This article describes the current state of the US grain transport system. It also describes the current and future transport problems faced by US farmers and grain companies in moving grain from farm to domestic and export markets. Finally, a set of research needs is identified to help solve the current and future problems facing the US grain transportation system.

Fair Trade: An English Reaction to the Breakdown of the Cobden Treaty System

Previous articleNext article No AccessFair Trade: An English Reaction to the Breakdown of the Cobden Treaty SystemSydney H. ZebelSydney H. Zebel Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 12, Number 2Jun., 1940 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/236456 Views: 11Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1940 The University of Chicago PressPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Karen Lovejoy Knight The Elusive A.C. Pigou, (Dec 2018): 19–77.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01018-8_2Nahid Aslanbeigui, Guy Oakes The British Tariff Reform Controversy and the Genesis of Pigou's Wealth and Welfare , 1903–12, History of Political Economy 47, no.suppl_1suppl_1 (Dec 2015): 23–48.https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-3130427Edmund Rogers A ‘Small Free Trade Oasis’?: agriculture, tariff policy, and the Danish example in Great Britain and Ireland, c. 1885–1911, Scandinavian Journal of History 38, no.11 (Feb 2013): 42–64.https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2012.741532EDMUND ROGERS THE UNITED STATES AND THE FISCAL DEBATE IN BRITAIN, 1873–1913, The Historical Journal 50, no.33 (Aug 2007): 593–622.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X07006279Michael J. Hiscox Class Versus Industry Cleavages: Inter-Industry Factor Mobility and the Politics of Trade, International Organization 55, no.11 (Jul 2003): 1–46.https://doi.org/10.1162/002081801551405