How a Nation was Born: Brazilian Economic Growth, 1574–1920

Guilherme Lambais and Nuno Palma

No 21341, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We construct the first long-run series of GDP per capita for Brazil, covering the period from 1574 to 1920. We build a new, hand-collected dataset including over 30,000 observations for prices and wages covering most major regions of Brazil: Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco, São Paulo, and Rio Grande do Sul. Our estimates imply an average per-capita growth rate of approximately zero during the colonial era (1574-1821), 0.69% per year during the imperial era (1822-1888), and 1.02% per year during the Early Republic. The latter estimates lie below the "pro-growth" view of late nineteenth-century Brazil but above the traditional narrative of complete stagnation.

JEL-codes: N16 N32 N36 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21341 (application/pdf)

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:cpr:ceprdp:21341

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21341

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().