The paradox of land reform, inequality and development in Colombia

Jean-Paul Faguet, Fabio Sanchez Torres and Marta Villaveces Niño ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Over two centuries, Colombia transferred vast quantities of land, equivalent to the entire UK landmass, mainly to landless peasants. And yet Colombia retains one of the highest concentrations of land ownership in the world. Why? We show that land reform’s effects are highly bimodal. Most of Colombia’s 1100+ municipalities lack a landed elite. Here, rural properties grew larger, land inequality and dispersion fell, and development indicators improved. But in municipalities where such an elite does exist and landholding is highly concentrated, such positive effects are counteracted, resulting in smaller rural properties, greater dispersion, and lower levels of development. We show that all of these effects – positive and negative – flow through local policy, which elites distort to benefit themselves. Our evidence implies that land reform’s second-order effects, on the distribution of local power, are more important than its first-order effects on the distribution of land.

Keywords: Land reform; inequality; development; latifundia; poverty; Colombia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-his and nep-lam
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:69207

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