Thomas Jefferson's agrarian vision and the changing nature of property -- The dialectics of government land policies (1785-1862) -- The dialectics of government land policies on arid land -- Multidimensional land -- Wilderness

I show how abundant land and scarce labor shaped African institutions before colonial rule. I present a model in which exogenous suitability of the land for agriculture and endogenously evolving population determine the existence of land rights, slavery, and polygyny. I then use crosssectional...