Landed elites, land reform, and development in twentieth-century Peru

This research project seeks to contribute to the debate on inequality and development by examining the long-term effects of longstanding landed elites on economic and human capital development and by assessing some of the impacts of the drastic land reform that put an end to the hacienda institution in Peru fifty years ago. The project will test whether the early establishment and expansion of hacienda estates adversely affected subnational patterns of educational attainment and industrial development across districts of Peru using an instrumental variable approach. One channel that we will address runs through the effect of haciendas on education, either through effects on the supply or the demand for schooling. The other channel looks at the links between hacienda concentration and industrial growth, where we will assess whether landed elites distorted local policies such as public goods provision or taxation. Additionally, we will analyze whether a major land redistribution policy that expropriated most of the haciendas in the 1970s was successful in mitigating the detrimental consequences of landholding inequality and, in turn, was able to foster productivity and economic development. We aim to evaluate the impact of this reform on agricultural total factor productivity and agricultural growth at the country level using a synthetic control approach. Finally, we will employ an age-cohort approach to test whether variations in land reform intensity across districts of Peru affected individual-level educational outcomes by impacting the demand for schooling.