Property Rights and Economic Growth: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Liam Brunt

No 6404, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: In 1795 the British took control of the Cape colony (South Africa) from the Dutch; and in 1843 they exogenously changed the legal basis of landholding, giving more secure property rights to landholders. Since endowments and other factors were held constant, these changes offer clean tests of the effects on economic growth of colonial identity and secure property rights. The effects of both changes were immediate, positive and large. Other legal and institutional changes, such as the move to a common law system in 1827, had no such effects on economic growth.

Keywords: Economic growth; Legal origins; Property rights (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N47 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP6404 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Property rights and economic growth: evidence from a natural experiment (2011)
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:cpr:ceprdp:6404

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP6404
orders@cepr.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (repec@cepr.org).