EFFECTS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 1921 AGRARIAN REFORM IN IAȘI COUNTY – AN ECONOMETRIC APPROACH

Abstract

Notwithstanding the multiple perceived deficiencies of the 1918-1921 agrarian reform pointed out by several authors, it can be firmly stated that it had considerable impact both in the County of Iași as well as in most other territorial units of interwar Romania, fact which is recorded in most of the papers written on the topic of the reform. Some of the most important effects of the vast process of redistribution of the land fund - perhaps the most extensive one ever recorded in the world or in Europe at least, according to the opinion of many reputed historians and economists were in the end expropriation of the big agricultural landowners in the county and the appropriation of peasants with individual plots. The discrepancy between the positive perception of the interwar period by a large share of contemporary Romanian society and the critical assessments and analyses in the works of some historians, mainly foreign ones, which are based on historical reports, data and information, can be justified and better understood on making use of statistics and statistical validation of the economic performance of the Kingdom of Romania between 1918 and 1939. Notwithstanding any critique of Statistics as a universal panacea with inevitable potential shortcomings, most authors agree that such assessments are highly relevant.