The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Property Institutions
利用19世纪俄亥俄州的自然实验，比较了两种土地划分制度（界址法与矩形系统）对土地价值的影响，发现矩形系统带来长期经济收益，揭示了交易成本和网络对产权与经济增长的重要性。
We use a natural experiment in nineteenth-century Ohio to analyze the economic effects of two dominant land demarcation regimes, metes and bounds (MB) and the rectangular system (RS). MB is decentralized with plot shapes, alignment, and sizes defined individually; RS is a centralized grid of uniform square plots that does not vary with topography. We find large initial net benefits in land values from the RS and also that these effects persist into the twenty-first century. These findings reveal the importance of transaction costs and networks in affecting property rights, land values, markets, and economic growth.