The Stolypin Reform and Agricultural Productivity in Late Imperial Russia

Paul Castañeda Dower and Andrei Markevich

No w0239, Working Papers from Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR)

Abstract: We study the effect of improvements in peasants’ land tenure, launched by the 1906 Stolypin reform, on agricultural productivity in late Imperial Russia. The reform allowed peasants to obtain land titles and consolidate separated land strips into single allotments. We find that consolidations increased land productivity. If the reform had been fully implemented, it would have doubled grain production in the empire. We argue that an important factor determining the positive impact on productivity is a decrease in coordination costs, enabling peasants to make independent production decisions from the village commune. In contrast, the titling component of the reform decreased land productivity and we present evidence that transaction costs explain this short-run decline.

Keywords: land tenure; peasant commune; Stolypin reform; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N43 N53 O43 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cis, nep-eff and nep-his
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cefir.ru/papers/WP239.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Stolypin reform and agricultural productivity in late imperial Russia (2019)
Working Paper: The Stolypin Reform and Agricultural Productivity in Late Imperial Russia (2017)
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:cfr:cefirw:w0239

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia Babich ().