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Railroads, land grants & economic productivity

2019-11-10 16:48:08.000033+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments

Twitter thread on the economic effects of railroad land grants

The paper is Land Concentration and Long-Run Development:Evidence from the Frontier United States Cory Smith

Summary: Because of the competing desires of the Homestead Act and wanting to get the railroads built quickly, alternating blocks of land were given to lots of individual small owners, or put under the ownership of one large company, and this paper looks at their relative economic productivity. Spoiler: The small land grants were way more productive.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Machinery Trains Economics Real Estate ]

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