On the economic effects of Indigenous institutions: Evidence from Mexico

Aldo Elizalde

Journal of Development Economics, 2020, vol. 147, issue C

Abstract: While Indigenous institutions affect policy outcomes and, consequently, economic development, our understanding of this association is as yet unclear. This paper examines this relationship using land reform in Mexico as a case study. Between 1917 and 1992, the rights to 16 million hectares of ancestral land were transferred to the Indigenous population in the form of land plots known as Comunidades Agrarias. By exploiting novel panel data for 13,600+ municipality-census observations, I find that ancestral land redistribution was more successful in municipalities with more complex Indigenous institutions. I hypothesise that centralised societies would have been more politically cohesive and therefore better able to coordinate collective actions against the state. The economic gains of the restoration policy were mainly found in the area of education.

Keywords: Institutions; Economic development; Ancestral land; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N20 N26 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438782030105X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:147:y:2020:i:c:s030438782030105x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102530

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().