Road Capture

Eric L. Jones
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Eric L. Jones: La Trobe University

Chapter Chapter 5 in Landed Estates and Rural Inequality in English History, 2018, pp 57-70 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The closure or diversion of public roads and particularly footpaths was extremely common, yet is almost never mentioned in the secondary literature. It reveals the historical importance to the landed gentry of amenity values, which extended to keeping traffic out of sight. Privatisation is ancient and, although most frequent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, continues to this day with respect to paths. The usual motive was privacy, a consumption good which accordingly demonstrates—contrary to assumptions in economics—that moving public assets into private hands does not mean they will be more efficiently employed. Documentary evidence, though often abundant, is however local or sometimes absent and has to be supplemented or replaced by ground observation.

Keywords: Consumption goods; Footpaths; Privatisation of rights-of-way; Public assets; Road capture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-319-74869-6_5

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-74869-6_5

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