TY  - BOOK
AU  - Libecap,Gary D.
AU  - Lueck, Dean
AU  - O’Grady, Trevor
TI  - Large-Scale Institutional Changes: land Demarcation in the British Empire
SN  - 00222186
PY  - 2011///
CY  - Chicago
PB  - University of Chicago Press
KW  - Agricultural land
KW  - Colonies
KW  - Cost control
KW  - Demarcation problem
KW  - Land economics
KW  - Land surveying
KW  - Land use
KW  - Public land
KW  - Soil quality
N2  - We examine adoption of land demarcation in the British Empire during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. We develop a model and test its implications against data from temperate British colonies in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Three arrangements were implemented: individualized, idiosyncratic metes and bounds; a centralized, uniform rectangular system; and a centralized, nonuniform demarcation system. The choice of arrangement is determined using demarcation, topographical, and soil quality data sets with qualitative, historical information. We find that centralized systems provide coordination benefits, but adoption is less likely when implementation is slow and controlling settlement is costly. In centralized systems, we find that uniform rectangular demarcation lowers transaction costs, but its rigid structure is costly in rugged terrain, and alternatives are adopted
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1086/662185
ER  -