Preliminary and incomplete version Do not quote without the permission of the authors Gender Inequality in Property Rights: Six Centuries of Commons Governance in the Alps Marco Casari University of Bologna and Maurizio Lisciandra University of Messina1 18 September 2013 Abstract In the Middle Ages women had substantially more rights on collective properties than in Modern and Contemporary Ages. Based on an original dataset of hundreds of communities in the Italian Alps, we provide a long-term perspective of decentralized institutional change (13th-19th centuries). The documental evidence shows the progressive erosion of women rights and a convergence toward a gender-biased inheritance system. This conclusion is supported by a detailed study of the evolution of inheritance regulations on common land in the peasant communities of Trentino over a period of six centuries. When population pressure increased, a patrilineal system emerged as a protective measure to preserve per-capita endowment of collective properties within a community. Keywords: commons; gender discrimination; inheritance systems; long-term institutional change. JEL: J12; N53; P48; Q20. 1 M. Casari: University of Bologna. Department of Economics, Piazza Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy. Phone: +39 051 209 8662, email:
[email protected] (corresponding author); M. Lisciandra: University of Messina. Department of Economics, Business, Environmental and Quantitative Methods, Piazza Pugliatti 1, 98122 Messina, Italy. Phone: +39 090 641 1070, email:
[email protected]. We thank for their comments Benito Arruñada and the seminar participants at the University of Amsterdam, University of Utrecht, Italian Law and Economics (SIDE) Meeting in Bologna, University of Valencia, the workshop on property rights and the German Law and Economics (GLEA) Meeting both in Bozen.