Full Citation

Title: Property Rights and Agricultural Production

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2008

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: Economic growth is built on agricultural productivity in the sense that agricultural productivity is what makes it possible for workers to enter manufacturing and the service sector. This paper examines a widely underappreciated factor in the historical development of the American agricultural productivity the strengthening of property rights over time as uncertainty gave way to the issuance of federal land patents. This paper uses a model of labor supply with uncertain property rights and two data sets, newly collected farm-level data for California in 1860 and county-level data for the United States in 1860 to examine the importance of secure property rights for agricultural production in the United States. The model predicts, and we find, that individuals with weaker property rights had substantially lower agricultural output. This suggests that strengthening property rights through the issuance of federal land patents played an important role in the growth of agricultural productivity in the United States. The results have implications for our understanding of American economic history and for the development of more secure property rights in the Third World.

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Clay, Karen

Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other

Countries: