Elites, State Capacity, and Development: Evidence from the Ecuadorian Land Reforms (available upon request)

How do elites respond to reform programs that threat their power? Elites, observing a state with weak capacity, could choose to undermine its implementation to preserve control over the existing structure with negative repercussions for economic development. Using the Ecuadorian land reforms from the 1960s and 1970s, and employing a unique dataset of land redistributions in Ecuador at the parish level digitized from historical archives, I study the impact of land reforms on current development outcomes. The main findings show that larger land redistributions during the 1964 and 1973 reforms are associated with higher levels of poverty in 2010, measured by the Unsatisfied Basic Needs Index (UBN). To recover the causal effect of reforms on development, I employ an IV strategy which exploits the assignment to the priority intervention zone defined by the government in 1973 for the second reform as an instrument. The potential mechanism is most likely associated with the fact that the agrarian structure was not affected significantly by the reform and the program did not have an impact of the provision of public goods either, suggesting that the state remained weak in those places. I also show that there is currently a higher share of individuals in the agricultural sector in places where land reform was conducted. Landed elites then appeared to have been successful at undermining the reform implementation process.

The Original Sin of Latin American States: Democratization, State Formation and State Capacity. (with Raúl Aldaz-Peña)

Patria o Partido? Patterns of President-led State Strengthening and Democracy. (with Raúl Aldaz-Peña and Andrés Mejia-Acosta)

A nowcasting model for Ecuador: Implementing a time-varying mean output growth. (with Manuel González-Astudillo). Economic Modelling. (2019). [Published Version] [Working Paper]

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Los desafíos de la educación preescolar, básica y media en Ecuador. (with Sebastián Oleas and José Mieles). in Los Desafíos de Educación Preescolar, Básica y Media en América Latina. SOPLA. (2014). pp. 177-194. [Published Version]