IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/ereveh/v13y2009i01p3-30_00.html

Making property productive: reorganizing rights to real and equitable estates in Britain, 1660–1830

Author

Listed:
  • BOGART, DAN
  • RICHARDSON, GARY

Abstract

Between 1660 and 1830, Parliament passed thousands of Acts restructuring rights to real and equitable estates. These estate Acts enabled individuals and families to sell, mortgage, lease, exchange and improve land previously bound by inheritance rules and other legal legacies. The loosening of these legal constraints facilitated the reallocation of land and resources towards higher-value uses. Data reveal correlations between estate Acts, urbanization and economic development during the decades surrounding the Industrial Revolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Bogart, Dan & Richardson, Gary, 2009. "Making property productive: reorganizing rights to real and equitable estates in Britain, 1660–1830," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 3-30, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:ereveh:v:13:y:2009:i:01:p:3-30_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1361491609002433/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Benito Arruñada, 2017. "How to Make Land Titling more Rational," Working Papers 983, Barcelona School of Economics.
    2. Mark Koyama, 2013. "Preindustrial Cliometrics," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 268-278, June.
    3. Theresa Finley & Raphaël Franck & Noel D. Johnson, 2021. "The Effects of Land Redistribution: Evidence from the French Revolution," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(2), pages 233-267.
    4. Cai,Yongyang & Selod,Harris & Steinbuks,Jevgenijs, 2015. "Urbanization and property rights," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7486, The World Bank.
    5. Gary D. Libecap & Dean Lueck & Trevor O'Grady, 2010. "Large Scale Institutional Changes: Land Demarcation Within the British Empire," NBER Working Papers 15820, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Aribah Aslam & Amjad Naveed & Ghulam Shabbir, 2021. "Is it an institution, digital or social inclusion that matters for inclusive growth? A panel data analysis," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 333-355, February.
    7. Cai, Yongyang & Selod, Harris & Steinbuks, Jevgenijs, 2018. "Urbanization and land property rights," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 246-257.
    8. Shruti Rajagopalan & Alex Tabarrok, 2021. "Simple rules for the developing world," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 341-362, December.
    9. Vlad Tarko, 2015. "The challenge of empirically assessing the effects of constitutions," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 46-76, March.
    10. Nouhoum Touré, 2021. "Culture, institutions and the industrialization process," Post-Print hal-04120441, HAL.
    11. Touré, Nouhoum, 2021. "Culture, institutions and the industrialization process," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 481-503.
    12. Ogilvie, Sheilagh & Carus, A.W., 2014. "Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 8, pages 403-513, Elsevier.
    13. repec:ehl:lserod:108564 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Johnson, Noel D. & Koyama, Mark, 2017. "States and economic growth: Capacity and constraints," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-20.
    15. Gary D. Libecap & Dean Lueck & Trevor O'Grady, 2011. "Large-Scale Institutional Changes: Land Demarcation in the British Empire," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(S4), pages 295-327.
    16. Christian Dippel & Dustin Frye & Bryan Leonard, 2020. "Property Rights without Transfer Rights: A Study of Indian Land Allotment," NBER Working Papers 27479, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Noel D. Johnson & Mark Koyama, 2014. "Taxes, Lawyers, and the Decline of Witch Trials in France," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(1), pages 77-112.
    18. Dan Bogart & Gary Richardson, 2010. "Estate acts, 1600–1830: A new source for British history," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, pages 1-50, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    19. Deng, Hanzhi, 2021. "The merit of misfortune: Taiping Rebellion and the rise of indirect taxation in modern China, 1850s-1900s," Economic History Working Papers 108564, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    20. António Henriques & Nuno Palma, 2023. "Correction to: Comparative european institutions and the little divergence, 1385–1800," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 295-295, June.
    21. Antonio Henriques & K. Kivanc Karaman & Nuno Palma, 2025. "State capacity and executive constraints in early modern Europe," Lewis Lab Working Papers Series 0010, Arthur Lewis Lab, The University of Manchester.
    22. Timur Kuran & Jared Rubin, 2014. "The Financial Power of the Powerless: Socio-Economic Status and Interest Rates under Partial Rule of Law," Working Papers 14-22, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • K0 - Law and Economics - - General
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • N43 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N93 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • P4 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:ereveh:v:13:y:2009:i:01:p:3-30_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ere .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.