Land Inequality in a Coffee Economy: São Paulo During the Early Twentieth Century

Renato Colistete () and Maria Lucia Lamounier ()

No 2014_01, Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP)

Abstract: This article examines the distribution of land ownership in the northeastern part of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, the leading coffee export region in the world during the early twentieth century. Based on a detailed agricultural census, we find a widespread presence of small and medium-size farms, with varied degrees of land concentration across subregions and municipalities. Still, large farms and latifundia controlled most of the productive resources in northeast São Paulo, resulting in high levels of inequality when compared to those of other export regions in South and North America.

Keywords: Land Inequality; Coffee; São Paulo; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N5 N50 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-02-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-his and nep-lam
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.repec.eae.fea.usp.br/documentos/Colistete_Lamounier01WP.pdf (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:spa:wpaper:2014wpecon1

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pedro Garcia Duarte ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).