Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Price of Property: An Economic and Spatial Analysis of American Indian Land Loss on the Western Frontier, 1880-1915

该奖项全部或部分根据2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117 - 2）资助。这篇经济学博士论文研究（DDRIE）项目将研究美国印第安部落的经济状况，土地权和水权如何受到西部扩张的影响。美国印第安人的发展，由于西部扩张的演变，允许在许多方面的制度发展的长期存在的问题的研究-土地和自然资源管理期间和自结算，财产权的执行，合同的承认，以及公共财政的腐败。这项研究基于一个新的数据集的建设，该数据集基于高度分类的年度数据，该数据集着眼于个人土地转让随时间的推移，包括部落特征，社会经济数据，土地使用信息，法律的机构以及部落与美国政府之间的财务安排细节。该项目将提供一个新的地块级数据集，收集国家档案馆和其他来源保存的信息，这些信息以前由于技术限制而难以汇总。该项目将广泛扩大有关美国西部定居点和美国与美洲印第安部落关系的关键信息的可及性。第一部分集中在土地特征、社会经济条件和公共财政如何影响美洲印第安保留地边界。该研究小组已经对土地管理局记录中的个别地块的转让进行了地理编码，并与保留地边界，土地价格信息数据，印第安人事务办公室的历史报告以及数字化的美国-美国印第安人条约相匹配。地块数据使研究人员能够分析保留地的棋盘格，随着新规则的引入而发生的模式变化，部落和保留地之间经验的异质性，以及部落和联邦政府之间条约和财务安排的影响。第二部分则着重于与土地转让相关的政治经济学和立法变化-以审查征用机制。第三部分研究了部落水权的变化和不确定性对西部水资源利用和质量的影响。我使用数百万的观察水污染测量从1960年到现在，研究如何在这些案件中的诉讼和具体的解决方案和裁决的时间影响水污染模式的保留和周围的水道保留外。因此，拟议中的项目将通过以新颖的方式连接新的和现有的历史信息，以更好地了解美国西部定居点周围的法律的和经济机构的前身和影响，从而增强当前的文献。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This doctoral dissertation research in economics (DDRIE) project will study how the economic conditions, land rights, and water rights of American Indian tribes were influenced by western expansion. The evolution of American Indian development as a result of western expansion allows for the study of long-standing questions about institutional development in many ways---land and natural resource management during and since settlement, property rights enforcement, contract recognition, and corruption in public finance. This research is based on the construction of a new dataset based on highly disaggregated annual data that looks at individual land transfers over time and includes tribal characteristics, socio-economic data, land-use information, legal institutions, and details of financial arrangements between tribes and the U.S. government. This project will make available a new dataset of parcel-level data, collecting information held in the national archives and other sources that have been difficult to aggregate previously due to technological limitations. This project will broadly expand the accessibility of pivotal information regarding U.S. western settlements and the United States’ relationship with American Indian tribes.The first section focuses on how land characteristics, socio-economic conditions, and public finance influenced American Indian reservation boundaries. The research team has have geocoded the transfers of individual parcels of land from Bureau of Land Management records and matched to reservation boundaries, data on land-price information, to historic reports from the Office of Indian Affairs, and to digitized U.S. – American Indian treaties. The land parcel data allows the researchers to analyze the checkerboarding of reservations, changes in patterns as new rules are introduced, the heterogeneity of experiences across tribes and reservations, and the impact of treaty and financial arrangements between the tribes and federal government. The second section then focuses on the political economy and legislative changes associated with land transfers – to examine the mechanisms of expropriation. The third section examines the impact of changes in and the uncertainty surrounding tribal water rights on western water use and quality. I use millions of observations of water pollution measurements from 1960 to the present to examine how the timing of lawsuits and specific settlements and rulings in these cases influenced water pollution patterns on reservations and outside reservations for surrounding waterways. The proposed project will thus enhance the current literature by using connecting new and existing historic information in novel ways to better understand the precursors and impacts of legal and economic institutions surrounding U.S. western settlement.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.