Essays on land rights, their evolution and impacts : comparative quantitative studies

Abstract

Political institutions that confine the power of the rulers are believed to be of central importance for long run economic growth, financial development, and democracy (e.g., North and Weingast, 1989; North et al., 2009; Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012; Acemoglu et al., 2014). But where do such political institutions come from? There is little agreement on this. Noting the important role of landed property in elites' accumulation and exercise of power, the focus here is on the impact of secure land rights on institutional constraints on rulers.

A prerequisite for empirical investigation of such possible impact is a consistent and rigorous measure of land rights, preferrably for many countries over a long period of time, so that we can trace, compare and explain the emergence of limited government. This measure per se is fundamentally important, given the crucial role of landed property in economic, political and social life. However, there is no such systematic dataset.

Following an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 describes and documents our collecting and coding of the _rst systematic dataset of historical land rights for 26 countries (24 major European countries, China and Japan) from 1500 to 1850 (every 100 years from 1500 to 1700, and every 50 years from 1700 to 1850). Focusing on six aspects within the bundle of rights, our land rights measures capture the security of land ownership (of the elites) in numeric form. This allows us to see clearly the long-term evolution of land rights and compare them across a wide range of countries. It then surveys the evolution of land rights in selective countries in the sample, based on the historical evidence collected, and describes the patterns of land rights development over time and across all the countries in the sample.

Chapter 3 examines empirically the implication of land rights for the development of institutions constraining the abuse of power by the government. To proxy for the limits on government, we use the “constraint on the executive” from Polity IV, extended by Acemoglu et al. (2005) and our coding. The results suggest there is a significantly positive correlation between such constraints and the security of land rights in the past period. Moreover, it is more likely that secure land rights precede the emergence of limits on government power than the other way round. However, such positive relationship is much weaker when the sample is restricted to central and southern Europe, the Balkans or the former Holy Roman Empire countries.