This paper examines how improved market access influenced the decline of manorialism and the emergence of modern land property rights in nineteenth-century Hungary. During this period, the separation of landlord and peasant economies and the division of commons finalized the abolition of serfdom and established secure landownership. I exploit the expansion of the railroad network as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in market access. The results indicate that villages experiencing greater improvements in market access were significantly more likely to implement land partition between landlords and peasants. The effect was stronger in areas with higher agricultural potential and a larger share of landless laborers. The findings are robust to alternative specifications and weak-instrument tests.
What is the effect of the emancipation of serfs and the creation of modern property rights on economic development? Was the former or the latter more important in fostering economic development? I examine how the disappearance of feudal property rights institutions and the emancipation of serfs affected land use, agricultural income, literacy and industrial employment in the Kingdom of Hungary. I use village-level data the land settlement process that ended the manorial economy and partitioned the landlord lands from that of the serfs. This final step of abolition of serfdom helped to create more secure land property rights that contemporaries considered crucial to introduce modern agricultural techniques. Specifically, I look at how land partition impacted land use, that is, how the share of different land use changed in villages that went through the partition process. Using different matching methods, I find that villages where the land partition happened, the share of arable lands were higher, while the share of grazing lands were lower. This is in line with the mechanism that arable agriculture is more propriety right intensive than animal husbandry. The decrease in the share of grazing land can be also explained by the fact that the land partition included the division of common pastures that could be henceforth used for different way. On the other hand, using county-level data, I find that the emancipation of serfs lead to higher literacy rates and higher share of industrial employment, while the land settlement process did not have impact on it.
Works in Progress
Cadastral Mapping, Property Rights and Economic Development
Emancipation, Economic Development and Jewish Education