Land Consolidation Reforms: A Natural Experiment on the Economic and Political Effects of Agricultural Mechanization

Gabriel Loumeau

No 22/376, CER-ETH Economics working paper series from CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich

Abstract: This paper studies the causal economic and political effects of agricultural mechanization. For identification, it exploits a spatial discontinuity in the intensity of mechanization induced by land consolidation reforms in France between 1945 and 2008. The results suggest that an increase in mechanization leads to long-term growth in population (+9.5%), employment (+15%), and income (+0.5%), but also to an increase in the far-right vote share (+6.1%). To explain the rise in populism despite significant economic growth, the paper shows that mechanization also induces significant immigration flows and changes in social organization (via the decline of the family farm model).

Keywords: Mechanization; Natural experiment; Land consolidation; Local activity; Populism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 N54 O33 Q12 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 72 pages
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-inter ... papers/WP-22-376.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not found UA (https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-22-376.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-22-376.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eth:wpswif:22-376

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CER-ETH Economics working paper series from CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().