The Political Economy of the American Frontier Reprint Edition
Author(s): Ilia Murtazashvili (Author)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: April 28, 2016
Edition: Reprint
Language: English
Print length: 302 pages
ISBN-10: 1107514770
ISBN-13: 9781107514775
Book Description
This book offers an analytical explanation for the origins of and change in property institutions on the American frontier during the nineteenth century. Its scope is interdisciplinary, integrating insights from political science, economics, law, and history. This book shows how claim clubs – informal governments established by squatters in each of the major frontier sectors of agriculture, mining, logging, and ranching – substituted for the state as a source of private property institutions and how they changed the course of who received a legal title, and for what price, throughout the nineteenth century. Unlike existing analytical studies of the frontier that emphasize one or two sectors, this book considers all major sectors, as well as the relationship between informal and formal property institutions, while also proposing a novel theory of emergence and change in property institutions that provides a framework to interpret the complicated history of land laws in the United States.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“In The Political Economy of the American Frontier, Ilia Murtazashvili provides a significant reinterpretation of U.S. land policy in the nineteenth century. His detailed analysis of the role of claims clubs in lowering the price paid to purchase government land raises interesting questions about the reasons why the federal government chose not to maximize its revenue from land sales. Murtazashvili’s arguments are based on considerable historical research, making an important contribution to the study of the impact of institutions and to understanding American economic and political history.” – Stanley Engerman, John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History, University of Rochester
Book Description
Demonstrates why claim clubs are perhaps the most important explanation for the origins of and change in property institutions during an important period in American history.
About the Author
Ilia Murtazashvili is currently an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. He holds a PhD in political science and an MA in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Murtazashvili's research focuses on political economy and institutional design. He is the co-author, with Donald Alexander Downs, of Arms and the University: Military Presence and the Civic Education of Non-Military Students (Cambridge, 2012).
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