IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jeurec/v22y2024i6p2870-2908..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Power, Elite Control, and Long-Run Development: Evidence from Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Claudio Ferraz
  • Frederico Finan
  • Monica Martinez-Bravo

Abstract

This paper analyzes how changes in the concentration of political power affect long-run development. We study Brazil’s military dictatorship whose rise to power dramatically altered the distribution of power of local political elites. We document that municipalities that were more politically concentrated prior to the dictatorship in the 1960s are relatively richer in 2000, despite being poorer initially. Our evidence suggests that this reversal of fortune was the result of the military’s policies aimed at undermining the power of traditional elites. These policies increased political competition among traditional elites, leading to better governance, more public goods, and higher income levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudio Ferraz & Frederico Finan & Monica Martinez-Bravo, 2024. "Political Power, Elite Control, and Long-Run Development: Evidence from Brazil," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 22(6), pages 2870-2908.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:22:y:2024:i:6:p:2870-2908.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvae033
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:22:y:2024:i:6:p:2870-2908.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jeea .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.