Dear colleagues, The Department of Economics cordially invites you to the WU Economic Research Seminar on Wednesday, October 27th, with Daniel Oto-Peralías (Universidad Pablo de Olavide) on "Delegating Governmental Authority to Private Actors: Lordships, State Capacity and Development" Abstract: This paper investigates the consequences of delegation of governmental authority through the study of a pivotal local political institution in historical Europe: the lordship. I collect data on seigneurial jurisdictions for ancien-regime Spain and document a negative relationship between having been a seigneurial town in the 18th century and current economic development. To shed light on the causal effect, I focus on the distribution of lordships in the former Kingdom of Granada after its conquest by the Catholic Monarchs, which can be considered as conditionally random. The results confirm the negative effect of lordship found for the whole country: towns that shortly after the conquest were granted to nobles are relatively poorer today. In addition, I explore the mechanisms of persistence, with the results pointing to lower state capacity as a main explanatory factor. This finding is consistent with an interpretation of seigneurial jurisdictions as a privatization of the local government, which has historically hindered the application of central government policies and lowered the state's infrastructural capacity in former manorial towns. Date: Wednesday, October 27th Time: 4.30 to 6 pm (CET) Location: Zoom. You can access starting from 4.30 pm using this link<https://wu-ac-at.zoom.us/j/95195701137?pwd=QVhwRTNDRmxsUWsrRlFuY3JWTmdVQT09>. With best regards, Harald Oberhofer --- Univ.-Prof. Dr. Harald Oberhofer Department of Economics WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Phone: +43/1/31336-4984 Fax: +43/1/31336-4984 Email: harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at> Webpage: https://www.wu.ac.at/ie/mitarbeiter/harald-oberhofer/ Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) Phone: +43/1/7982601-468 Fax: +43/1/7989386 Email: harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at> Webpage: http://www.wifo.ac.at/harald_oberhofer