Land markets and inequality: evidence from medieval England

The Hundred Rolls survey of 1279 documents substantially more inequality in the distribution of peasant landholdings than does the Domesday survey of 1086. Twelfth-century innovations in property rights over land induced peasants to expand the role of land market trades in their portfolio of risk-coping strategies. We argue that these events are related. Simulation analysis suggests that the primary source of the increasingly unequal distribution of peasant landholdings was the interaction between distress land sales and population growth driven by high fertility rates in households with large landholdings.