Gender Discrimination in Property Rights: Six Centuries of Commons Governance in the Alps

Abstract

Starting from the Medieval period, women in the Italian Alps experienced a progressive erosion in property rights over the commons. We collected documents about the evolution of inheritance regulations on collective land issued by hundreds of villages over a period of six centuries (thirteenth-nineteenth). Based on this original dataset, we provide a long-term perspective of decentralized institutional change in which gender-biased inheritance systems emerged as a defensive measure to preserve the wealth of village insiders. This institutional change also had implications for the population growth, marriage strategies, and the protection from economic shocks.

Group size in social-ecological systems

“…Group size is a critical feature of social-ecological systems whose performance largely depends on the ability to cooperate (11,20,42). This article documents the analysis of a unique dataset spanning almost six centuries and including hundreds of communities that managed their common resources (18,23,29). We report a considerable stability of average group size.…”

“…An immigrant could access the common land only if he or she became a formal member of the community, either by purchase or inheritance (18). Over time, inheritance rules evolved toward a patrilineal system that effectively stopped any net immigration into a community (29). A more detailed description of data and methods is available in Supporting Information.…”

“…Assemblies deliberated on management aspects and set rules for harvesting the resources and for organization building. The assembly enjoyed wide-ranging powers, including appointing community officers, regulating assembly participation, inflicting sanctions, alienating the common land, and regulating membership rights and inheritance rules (29). Besides crafting the resource governance rules, the community was also in charge of their local, day-to-day enforcement (19).…”

“…For example, the aggregate benefits of one unit of effort in keeping the air clean increase with group size. In contrast, the benefits of limiting overfishing are constant, regardless of the group size; as the group grows, the individual shares of the aggregate benefit will be reduced (8,29,32). Both theoretical and empirical perspectives on common property resources suggest full efficiency with individual ownership and a rapid decline in efficiency already occurring when the groups reach eight members, with losses above 50% and approaching 100% for large sizes (19) (Supporting Information).…”

Do inheritance rules affect voter turnout? Evidence from an Alpine region

“…The number of agricultural firms per 100 inhabitants is positively correlated with the number of entailed farms per 100 inhabitants. The share of commons relates to community land properties of Medieval origin which are still present in South Tyrol and represent a relevant share of all properties (Casari 2007;Casari and Lisciandra 2016). In most cases these lands are high mountain pastures.…”