The Spanish collective institutions for irrigation management have become a reiterated reference in the study of common pool resources. However, the success of Spanish irrigators in the local management of water contrasts with an important failure in the management of this common pool resource...

The expansion of trade in pre-industrial Europe led to a transformation of agriculture. It induced specialization to exploit comparative advantage as well as a restructuring of the process of production, with manorial agriculture giving way to an agriculture of family farms. Technological...

Russian Abstract: В работе рассматривается вопрос о влиянии населенности крестьянского двора на доходность помещичьих имений. Автор приходит к выводу о наличии прямой...

Economists and economic historians have generally understood different forms of land tenure as arrangements for the supply of labor. This paper suggests a different interpretation -- that land-tenure arrangements be understood rather as arrangements for the supply of financing. The cost and...

Throughout western Europe, beginning about 1200, leasing of lords' estates became more common relative to direct management. In England, however, direct management increased beginning around the same time and until the fourteenth century, and leasing increased thereafter. This article models...

According to economic theory, the clear definition of property rights is essential for well-functioning markets. Comparatively little attention, however, is given to explaining the development of these rights. Economic reasoning suggests that markets themselves call property rights into...

Enclosures enforced private property rights at the onset of industrialization, yet numerous estimations of the enclosures' effects on production and productivity rely on non-experimental designs. We estimate the causal effects of enclosure reforms applying state- of-the-art...

This paper deals with agricultural dynamics in late-Imperial Russia. Based upon a comprehensive micro-level data set on annual yields between 1883 and 1913, we provide insight into regional differences of agricultural growth and the development prospects of Russian agriculture before WWI. Making...

The massive land privatization that took place over the 19th century deeply transformed the Spanish economic landscape. Nevertheless, the outcome of the process was quite different, both in pace and impact, depending on the geographic area we analyze. The explanation for this regional diversity...

El presente trabajo analiza y compara, desde la perspectiva analítica del metabolismo social, los usos del suelo y los balances energéticos derivados de estos usos de los sistemas agrarios de cinco municipios de la comarca catalana del Vallès, en dos momentos históricos que ilustran las...