Making Property Productive: Reorganizing Rights to Real and Equitable Estates in Britain, 1660 to 1830

Dan Bogart and Gary Richardson

No 14107, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Between 1660 and 1830, Parliament passed thousands of acts restructuring rights to real and equitable estates. These estate acts enabled individuals and families to sell, mortgage, lease, exchange, and improve land previously bound by inheritance rules and other legal legacies. The loosening of these legal constraints facilitated the reallocation of land and resources towards higher-value uses. Data reveals correlations between estate acts, urbanization, and economic development during the decades surrounding the Industrial Revolution.

JEL-codes: D02 D61 D63 D86 K0 K11 N0 N43 N93 O12 P48 R12 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-law and nep-ure
Date: 2008-06
Note: DAE LE POL
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14107.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

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

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14107
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().