Colonial Origins of Inequality in Hispanic America? Some reflections based on new empirical evidence

Rafael Dobado González and Hector Garcia Montero ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper attempts at contributing to the ongoing debate on the historical roots of the high economic inequality of contemporary Iberian America. Basically empirical, our approach departs from mainstream scholarship. We show new data on wages and heights in several viceroyalties that: 1) suggest relatively medium to high levels of material welfare among the commoners in Bourbon Hispanic America; 2) allow us to build indexes of economic inequality. An international comparison of those indexes casts some doubts on the widely accepted view that Viceroyal America’s economy was exclusively based on extremely unequal or extractive institutions, as it has been popularized by the influential works by Engerman and Sokoloff (1994, 2002, 2005), Acemoglu et al. (2002).

Keywords: economic inequality; Iberian America; Viceroyal America’s economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published in Journal of Latin American and Iberian Economic History 28.2(2010): pp. 253-277

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Related works:
Journal Article: Colonial Origins of Inequality in Hispanic America? Some Reflections Based on New Empirical Evidence* (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:28738

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