IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/seh/wpaper/1506.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Institutional Inertia: Persistent Inefficient Institutions in Spain

Author

Listed:
  • José Antonio Espín-Sánchez

Abstract

In 1966, after over 700 years, the irrigation community in Mula (Spain) switched from auctions to a quotas to allocate water from its river. This change happened in the absence of either political or technological change. Quotas were more efficient but required that farmers own water property rights. A farmer would promise to pay over time and became a borrower. However, she would not work hard because the output went to the lender. Anticipating this outcome, the lender would not sell the water rights. A temporary increase in output prices increased their collateral solving the commitment problem.

Suggested Citation

  • José Antonio Espín-Sánchez, 2015. "Institutional Inertia: Persistent Inefficient Institutions in Spain," Documentos de Trabajo de la Sociedad de Estudios de Historia Agraria 1506, Sociedad de Estudios de Historia Agraria.
    • Handle: RePEc:seh:wpaper:1506
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repositori.uji.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10234/140945/DT-SEHA%201506.pdf?sequence=1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2008. "Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 267-293, March.
    2. Samuel Garrido & Salvador Calatayud, 2011. "The price of improvements: agrarian contracts and agrarian development in nineteenth‐century eastern Spain," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(2), pages 598-620, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Donna, Javier & Espin-Sanchez, Jose, 2014. "The Illiquidity of Water Markets," MPRA Paper 55078, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2016. "Long-Term Persistence," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(6), pages 1401-1436, December.
    2. Gilles Saint‐Paul & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2016. "A Theory of Political Entrenchment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(593), pages 1238-1263, June.
    3. Ernesto Dal Bó & Pedro Dal Bó & Jason Snyder, 2009. "Political Dynasties," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 115-142.
    4. Andrei A. Levchenko, 2013. "International Trade and Institutional Change," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 1145-1181, October.
    5. Campos, Nauro F. & Coricelli, Fabrizio, 2009. "Financial Liberalization and Democracy: The Role of Reform Reversals," IZA Discussion Papers 4338, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Davide Cantoni & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2011. "The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3286-3307, December.
    7. Raul Ramos & Vicente Royuela, 2014. "“Income inequality in Europe. Analysis of recent trends at the regional level”," IREA Working Papers 201425, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Oct 2014.
    8. Castañeda Dower, Paul & Pfutze, Tobias, 2015. "Vote suppression and insecure property rights," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 1-19.
    9. Aparicio, Sebastian & Urbano, David & Audretsch, David, 2016. "Institutional factors, opportunity entrepreneurship and economic growth: Panel data evidence," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 45-61.
    10. repec:esx:essedp:751 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Graziella Bertocchi & Arcangelo Dimico, 2017. "De jure and de facto determinants of power: evidence from Mississippi," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 321-345, December.
    12. Samuel Garrido, 2010. "Mejorar y quedarse. La cesión de tierra a rentas por debajo del equilibrio en la Valencia del siglo XIX," Documentos de Trabajo de la Sociedad de Estudios de Historia Agraria 1009, Sociedad de Estudios de Historia Agraria.
    13. Dzhumashev, Ratbek, 2014. "Corruption and growth: The role of governance, public spending, and economic development," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 202-215.
    14. Mohammad Amin & Priya Ranjan, 2008. "When Does Legal Origin Matter?," Working Papers 080912, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    15. Milan Zafirovski, 2022. "Some dilemmas of economic democracy: Indicators and empirical analysis," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(1), pages 252-302, February.
    16. Bautista, M. A. & González, F. & Martínez, L. R. & Muñoz, P. & Prem, M., 2020. "Chile’s Missing Students: Dictatorship, Higher Education and Social Mobility," Documentos de Trabajo 18163, Universidad del Rosario.
    17. Sukkoo Kim, 2007. "Institutions and U.S. Regional Development: A Study of Massachusetts and Virginia," NBER Working Papers 13431, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Buck, Florian & Hildebrand, Nikolaus, 2014. "Elites and Bank-Based Finance: A political economy model on the emergence of financial systems," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100336, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Maria Carmela Schisani & Luigi Balletta & Giancarlo Ragozini, 2021. "Crowding out the change: business networks and persisting economic elites in the South of Italy over Unification (1840–1880)," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 15(1), pages 89-131, January.
    20. Marcus Dejardin & Hélène Laurent, 2024. "Entry-regulation and corruption: grease or sand in the wheels of entrepreneurship? Fresh evidence according to entrepreneurial motives," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 62(3), pages 1223-1272, March.
    21. Javier Rodríguez Weber, 2018. "Alta desigualdad en América Latina: desde cuándo y por qué," Documentos de trabajo 51, Programa de Historia Económica, FCS, Udelar.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Institutions; Natural Resources; Water; Financial Institutions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N53 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:seh:wpaper:1506. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Antonio Linares (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sehiaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.