Property rights, land liquidity, and internal migration

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chernina, Eugenia; Dower, Paul Castaneda; Markevich, Andrei
• 署名单位: HSE University (National Research University Higher School of Economics); New Economic School; New Economic School; University of Warwick
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2013.03.010
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 191-215
• 关键词: Property rights; migration; Stolypin; Land liquidity; Land titles

摘要

In the early twentieth century, a large number of households resettled from the European to the Asian part of the Russian Empire. We propose that this dramatic migration was rooted in institutional changes initiated by the 1906 Stolypin land titling reform. One might expect better property rights to decrease the propensity to migrate by improving economic conditions in the reform area. However, this titling reform increased land liquidity and actually promoted migration by easing financial constraints and decreasing opportunity costs. Treating the reform as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ difference-in-differences analysis on a panel of province-level data that describe migration and economic conditions. We find that the reform had a sizeable effect on migration. To verify the land liquidity effect, we exploit variation in the number of households participating in the reform. This direct measure of the reform mechanism estimates that land liquidity explains approximately 18% of migration during this period. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.