The Impact of the Taylor Grazing Act: Heterogeneous Investment Responses and Land Use Change
The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 converted the open range of the American West into grazing rights bundled with private "base" property. I model how this structure directs complementary investment toward the deeded base and test its predictions with a continuous-treatment difference-in-differences design covering 302 western counties from 1910 to 1974. Secure rights capitalized durably into farmland values, by 21 percent at low intensity and 48 percent at high, even as grazing pressure fell. Investment reallocated as the model predicts, tilting from land toward capital as exposure rose. The Act appears to have stabilized cattle production, with the adjustment falling on sheep, most sharply at high exposure, where their methods, historically less dependent on private land, ran up against a qualification built on holding it. The effects persist four decades after the Act, evidence that how rights are structured, not merely whether they exist, shapes production for generations.