Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/279092 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 16394
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
difference-in-differences
agriculture
production
property rights
enclosures
event-study
JEL: 
Q15
Q24
N53
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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