Abstract

This article examines how a common-property regime evolved within the context of property rights reforms, using empirical data from a Swedish parish over three centuries, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth. By adopting a transaction-cost approach, I argue that the standard depiction of how collective rights were transformed into individual rights has been oversimplified. One of the features that made the common-property regime successful was the interplay between de jure and de facto property rights. The land consolidation reforms of the early nineteenth century were costly for almost all landowners in the region, and required the adaptation of a well-established common-property regime to individually owned forestland.

Published in

Agricultural History Review
2014, Volume: 62, number: 1, pages: 40-60
Publisher: BRITISH AGRICULTURAL HISTORY SOC

SLU Authors

• Larsson, Jesper

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Indiana University

UKÄ Subject classification

Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)
Economic History
History


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/63435