The economic history, political economy and frontier settlement of land in Brazil

Land in Brazil is the common theme that binds together the three essays that compose this dissertation. The first essay examines the economic history of land policy in Brazil, from early colonial policy to the tardy formation of a market for land by the end of the nineteenth century. This is done by comparing the development of the Brazilian land policy with the path that was followed in the United States, where a market for land evolved much more quickly and led to a considerably less concentrated ownership structure. The second essay analyzes the political economy of agrarian reform in Brazil. The focus is on three periods when serious attempts were made to carry out an agrarian reform; the military regime, the New Republic and the writing of the Constitution in 1988. In each of these attempts there was a perception that an agrarian reform would yield important social and economic benefits. However, despite the genuine intentions of policy makers the reforms were either blocked or reversed and had little effect on the concentration of land ownership. These events provide an interesting case study of the political economy of economic reform and institutional change. Additionally this essay uses the data from the votes of the National Constituent Assembly of 1988 to test both a capture model and a capture plus ideology model for the interests concerned with agrarian reform. Finally, the third essay examines the behavior of settlers on the Amazon frontier as concerns the use of land. This is modeled dynamically focusing on the security of property rights and its effects on the settlers' decisions. The optimal paths which result from the model are illustrated through a simulation.