Institutional Innovations and Economic Development in Lombardy, Eighteenth – Twentieth Centuries

This chapter deals with the contribute of state-led institutional reforms in property rights since the second half of the eighteenth century to change Lombard agriculture and to accelerate economic development, which made this one of the most dynamic and productive regions deals with the contribute of state-led institutional reforms in property rights since the second half of the eighteenth century to change Lombard agriculture and to accelerate economic development, which made this one of the most dynamic and productive regions in contemporary Europe. The paper in particular focuses on a succession of reforms which began in eighteenth-century western Lombardy as a province in the Austrian empire, and which were then pursued under Napoleonic rule in the early nineteenth century and later, again under Austrian rule, generalized to the other areas of Lombardy. Reforms involved the drawing up and the successive extension and updating of a land cadastre, which made the allocation of landed property more precise and produced a quantitative assessment of its economic potential for tax purposes; the privatization of common land and collective rights; and correlative fiscal policies which had built-in incentives for landowners to either invest or sell the land to those willing to do so.