Agrotechnical Prerequisites of the Stolypin Agrarian Reform

Albania's radical agrarian reform.

The agrarian reform in Albania included free distribution of land to rural households and the complete break up of the former collective and state farms. These key features of the Albanian reform are in sharp contrast with other Central and Eastern European countries. Our paper explains the choice of the Albanian agricultural privatization and land reform process and the radical decollectivizat...

Whither agrarian reform in South Africa?

Agrarian reform and the ‘two economies’: transforming South Africa’s countryside

This chapter focuses on the rural dimensions of the ‘two economies’ debate, and in particular on the question of what contribution land and agrarian reform can make to reducing inequality and addressing the structural nature of rural poverty in post-apartheid South Africa. It suggests that the problem needs to be conceptualised in terms of an ‘agrarian question of the dispossessed’, that can on...

Political Conditions for Agrarian Reform and Poverty Alleviation

The purpose of this piece is to explore how we might go about understanding the political conditions for poverty alleviation via agrarian reform. It argues that the traditional conceptualization of agrarian reform and its politics -which presents a near impossibility in typical political configurations -is too limiting. The traditional economic focus on intersection of landed rights, agricultur...

Do property rights matter in Russia? The Stolypin titling reform and agricultural productivity

We study the effect of improvements in peasants’ property rights launched by the Stolypin reform on agricultural productivity in early 20 century Russia. We find that the enclosure component of the reform caused an increase in land productivity. We argue that this effect is mainly driven by better usage rights and not because of economies of scale or better tenure security. In addition, we find...