Description: Establishing economic property rights is a ubiquitous human activity that is key to the creation of wealth. Why the Rush? combines economic and historical analysis to argue that the institution of homesteading, as established in the US through the Homestead Act of 1862, was a method to establish meaningful, economic property rights on the American frontier. It explains how homesteading rushed millions of people into specific areas, established a meaningful sovereignty without the use of military force and became the means by which the US Thwarted military and legal challenges. Using fine-grained data, along with a detailed theoretical analysis and exhaustive institutional content, this book makes a serious contribution to the study of economic property rights and institutions providing the definitive analysis of the economics of homesteading and its role in American economic history.
Brief description: Douglas W. Allen is a Burnaby Mountain Professor in the Department of Economics at Simon Fraser University. He has over 100 academic publications and three books: The Nature of the Farm (with Dean Lueck, 2002); The Institutional Revolution (2012, Douglass North Book Prize); and Economic Analysis of Property Rights (with Yoram Barzel, 2023). He has won SFU's Silver Medal for Academic Excellence and three university teaching awards.
Review Quotes: 'Why the Rush provides a fresh and provocative understanding of the history of homesteading in the United States and Canada. Allen and Leonard combine the innovative use of new data sources with a path breaking application of the theory of the governance of newly settled lands. Their theoretical insights and empirical work makes this volume an important contribution to literature on homesteading.' Peter J. Hill, Professor of Economics Emeritus, Wheaton College and Senior Fellow, Property and Environment Research Center