Dimensions of Land Inequality and Economic Development

August 1, 2004

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Lennart Erickson, and Dietrich Vollrath. Dimensions of Land Inequality and Economic Development, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2004) accessed September 19, 2024

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

There are several theories linking land inequality with aspects of economic development. Empirical work on these theories has attempted to establish a relationship between land inequality and institutions, financial development, and education. This research, though, has relied on measures of land inequality that capture only inequality within the class of landholders, ignoring completely the issue of landlessness. This omission raises suspicion about the usefulness of those empirical results. We use a new measure of the breadth of landholdings across the agricultural population to address this issue. We test the proposed relationships regarding land inequality and development using the new measure. The regressions fail to find significant and robust relationships between land inequality of either type and institutions or financial development. We do find that lower land inequality across agricultural populations, but not inequality within the landholding class, is associated with greater public provision of education.

Subject: Education, Financial markets, Financial sector development, Income distribution, Income inequality, National accounts, Personal income

Keywords: Agricultural inequality, Country result, Education provision, Financial development, Financial sector development, Income distribution, Income inequality, Inequality result, Inequality variable, Institutions, Land concentration, Land distribution, Land holding, Land inequality, Land-holding Gini, North America, Personal income, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

24
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2004/158
Stock No:

WPIEA1582004
ISBN:

9781451857610
ISSN:

1018-5941

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