Colonial Institutions, Slavery, Inequality, and Development: Evidence from São Paulo, Brazil

Slavery, racial inequality, and education

“…In São Paulo, the intensity of slavery shows no discernable long-term impact on a variety of current education indicators [9].…”

Institutions, inequality, and long-term development: a perspective from Brazilian regions

“…Of these, Summerhill (2010), investigating the state of São Paulo, finds that a potentially coercive institution, the aldeamentos, has a positive correlation with income per capita in the long run. 26 More importantly, Summerhill (2010) finds no negative effect for inequality on long-term development. Nakabashi, Pereira, and Sachsida (2013) find a positive correlation between a measure of institutional quality and income levels in Brazilian municipalities.…”

“…26 "Aldeamentos were settlements that the Portuguese created to fix the semi-nomadic indigenous population in place, convert them to Christianity, provide with ongoing religious instruction, and defend against lesscooperative raiding Indians" (Summerhill 2010, p. 5). According to Summerhill (2010), the aldeamentos presented both negative and positive characteristics for economic growth.…”

“…Some of these studies maintain the cross-country approach using new data and/or strategies (e.g., Easterly 2007); some explore evidence within country variations, taking advantage of more disentangled data and a constant de jure environment, which reduces the potential impact of latent institutional and political variables (e.g., Summerhill, 2010;Ramcharan 2010;Nunn 2008). We will now explore these works.…”

“…( 2008) and Summerhill (2010), by computing equation (1) Infant Mortality (2000) HDI (2000) Poverty (%, 2000) Land Gini (1920) Overall Land Gini (1920) Income Gini (2000) Voters (%, 1920) GDP per capita (log, 2000) for all the CTU considered in this study, is 0.87. The average overall land Gini coefficients are 0.87 for Minas Gerais and Pernambuco, 0.88 for São Paulo, and 0.76 for Rio Grande do Sul (Table 5).…”