Старший научный сотрудник Центра Елена Корчмина совместно с Ильей Воскобойниковым сделали доклад на 17 Международном конгрессе по экономической истории в Киото, Япония

3 августа Елена Корчмина совместно с Ильей Воскобойниковым (Старший научный сотрудник: Лаборатория исследования проблем инфляции и экономического роста) сделали доклад ‘Income, souls and productivity of Russian estates on the eve of the abolition of serfdom: case of the Ryazan province in 1827’ на секции по The Quantitative Economic History of Central, East and South-East Europe на  XVII^th World Economic History Congress (Киото, Япония)

The present paper contributes to the debate on efficiency of production in noblemen estates on the eve of the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861. One strand of the literature argues that size reduction of noblemen estates in the first half of 19^th century made them less efficient. However, some scholars argue that performance of the estates did not suffer or even increased. Supporting the latter, we provide new evidence that two or more smaller estates, owned by one landlord, were more productive than one large because of better reallocation of labour. For this we develop a new dataset of noblemen estates with data on incomes, the number of serfs (souls), and information about the landlord, using documents of the noblemen elections of the Ryazan province in 1827. These rich sources include information about estates, souls and income, submitted by 776 noblemen – voters and candidates to positions in the noblemen self-administration and the local government. Estimating a simple production function we show, for example, that yearly income of a nobleman, who holds two estates with 50 souls, each of the estates having 50 souls, was more than 300 rubles higher than a nobleman with one estate and 100 souls.