Customary Institutions and the Demand for Land Titling in Late Imperial Russia

Abstract

How do individuals choose between formal and customary institutions? In developing countries, modernizing reforms, such as the introduction of formal land titling, often lag in the popular take-up despite their potential economic benefits. Focusing on the 1906 land reform in the Russian Empire, I examine the factors driving peasants’ choice to break away from a traditional institution of peasant commune that governed land tenure in favor of private property rights provided by the state. Taking advantage of newly digitized data covering 2,500 peasant communes in the province of Simbirsk in the southeastern part of European Russia in 1910–11, I argue that the demand for formal titling depended on the expected returns it provided in comparison to communal institutions. I show that peasants tended to take advantage of the reform whenever they perceived their property rights as insecure. However, if a commune offered a safety net by guaranteeing access to land to its members, the demand for land titling decreased. My results imply that the design of land reforms should account for the potential effects of customary institutions.