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.