Land Reform and Productivity: Evidence from the Dissolution of the French Monasteries

This article uses the confiscation and auction of monastic properties during the French Revolution to assess the effects of land reallocation on agricultural productivity. To proxy for monastic landholdings, I construct a novel dataset using the annual income and location of more than 1,500 French monasteries in 1768. I perform several cross-checking analyses and demonstrate the validity of the data as a proxy for monastic landholdings both at the monastery and arrondissement levels. I show that arrondissements with greater land reallocation experienced higher levels of agricultural productivity in the mid-19th century. I trace these increases in productivity to the creation of larger and less fragmented farms, leading to an increase in mechanization and the substitution of family labor with a hired specialized labor force.