The Causal Effects of Enclosures on Production and Productivity

Volha Lazuka (), Tommy Bengtsson () and Patrick Svensson
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Volha Lazuka: University of Southern Denmark
Tommy Bengtsson: Lund University

No 16394, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: 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 difference-in-differences and event-study methods to a large panel of farms observed between 1781 and 1865 in Sweden. Our results demonstrate that enclosures led to a 3.4 percent annual growth in land productivity in the first decade and overall production increase reached 82 percent after 30 years. Such results are much larger than previous estimates, suggesting that land enclosures were a prerequisite for modern economic growth.

Keywords: difference-in-differences; agriculture; production; property rights; enclosures; event-study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N53 Q15 Q24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2023-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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