From open to closed societies: Inequality, migration, and women's rights

Abstract

We study six centuries of institutional change in the governance of the commons across over three hundred Italian communities. Wealthier communities, facing migration pressure due to unequal resource endowments, restricted access to common property resources by excluding women from membership, thereby limiting migration through marriage. Using archival data and an agent-based model, we show that this endogenous closure spread via a domino effect and persisted until a centralized Napoleonic reform reinstated egalitarian access. The findings highlight how migration, inequality, and gendered institutions interact in polycentric systems, offering broader insights for the political economy of property rights on land and institutional reform in developing contexts.