The Ambivalent consequences of "modernization". Changes in Property Rights and Wealth Distribution in Buenos Aires, 1839-1914.

DANIEL SANTILLI; JULIO DJENDEREDJIAN

Stellenbosch

Congreso; XVIth World Economic History Congress.; 2012

Universidad de Sudáfrica

In this paper we analyze the evolution of real estate wealth distribution, and the effects brought on it by the implementation of a new system of property rights in Buenos Aires during the nineteenth century. The concept of that system used here is broad: it encompasses not only legal transfer to private hands of old public domains or wastelands, or the implementation of records owned and warranted by the State, but also the progress in physical control over resources. In other words, the economic use of these lands was paralleled by the construction of boundaries (fences) on the ground, not only in the papers. Beyond the survival of some part of them, the new system of property rights greatly disturbed the traditional ways of access to land. New property rights, based on legal certitude and physical limits, in a context of extremely fast economical and demographical development, had to gain the acceptation of a wide range of actors, whose conceptions of “legal”, “justice” or “rights” where not necessarily the same . But also that new legal order had a strong impact in relative price of land, particularly regarding the whole goods involved in rural production. If throughout the period, the world market was the final destination of a strong portion of produce (thus suggesting that this was a result of an increasingly competitive economy), anyway price of land reflected in high proportion the impact of changes in property rights, at least until a certain moment in history.