Abstract
This article examines how redistributive land reform reshaped agrarian relations and rural accumulation in interwar Romania. Engaging broader debates on land reform, peasant production and transitions to agrarian capitalism, it analyses the contradictory consequences of the 1921 reform, one of the largest redistributive settlements in interwar Europe. Using a newly assembled county-level dataset for 1922–1930, the article combines panel estimations with instrumental-variable strategies to assess how changing property relations affected agricultural productivity. The findings show that expanded peasant access to land often increased output and labour effort, but these gains were uneven and frequently offset by intensified fragmentation, weak infrastructure, limited market integration and low rural capitalization. Rather than generating a uniform path of capitalist transformation, redistribution produced differentiated regional trajectories combining social stabilization with persistent limits to accumulation. The Romanian case clarifies the conditions under which redistributive agrarian reforms reshape rural political economy.
Cuvinte cheie
land reform
agrarian change
peasant property
rural transformation
fragmentation
Romania
Eastern Europe
Istoric articol
Publicat
31.08.2026
Informații autori
Citare recomandată
Cornelia Tomescu-Dumitrescu (2026). Redistributive Land Reform and Uneven Agrarian Change: Property, Fragmentation and Rural Accumulation in Interwar Romania. Constantin Brâncuși University of Târgu Jiu Economics Series, 2(1), 498–523. https://doi.org/10.65631/jes.4.2026.46
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