The Economic Research Center (CIE), invites you to the Brown bag: "Leveraging the Agrarian Reform: Colonial Ecosystems

and Literacy Gains in Mexico"

Presented by: Luz Marina Arias

Will take place on August 25, from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm in Santa Teresa´s Seminars Room.

Abstract:

This article shows that the Mexican agrarian reform|long judged to have hindered rural development-|brought literacy gains to excluded communities. Using a di erence-in-di erences design with continuous treatment intensity and municipal census data (1900{1960), I show that land grants between 1916 and 1940 reduced illiteracy|but only in two of four colonial ecosystems

de ned by pueblo ethnic identity and proximity to haciendas circa 1800. I argue that the reform was a bundled reform|land granted together with schools, credit, and infrastructure|that  reduced illiteracy where it relieved a locally binding constraint. In municipalities with Indian pueblos far from haciendas, the constraint was linguistic and economic isolation; the policy's

integration components raised the returns to schooling. In mestizo-close municipalities, the constraint was hacienda labor dependency; redistribution freed households to gain from preexisting structural advantages. A cochineal-region placebo con rms the mechanism is speci c to the hacienda{pueblo symbiosis. The analysis shows how colonial institutions shape the reach of policy and the geography of development.