Reforma Agrária, Eficiência e Mudança Institutional no Campo: análise teórica e de fronteira estocástica com dados em painel (1998-2006)[Land Reform, Efficiency and Rural Institutional Change: theory and stochastic frontier analysis with panel data (1998-2006)]

This work deals with land reform in Brazil through an evolutionary and new institutional economics theoretical framework. Firstly, this theoretical underpinning delineates the existence of an intrinsic relation between asset equality and economic efficiency, going against the neoclassical trade-off. From this relation it is established that the utilization of society’s productive forces depends directly on institutional structures and propriety relations. In this sense, the way land reallocations are done, through different land redistribution policies, affects directly the level of agricultural product. The product is dependent on the level of allocative and technical efficiency society is submitted to. However, albeit static effects, society is susceptible to dynamic effects of institutional change. Insofar we develop analytical schematics where land reform is related to rural institutional change. From this schematics we derive the hypothesis that the market based land reform executed in Brazil, as a way to redistribute assets supposedly with a governance structure, system of incentives and complementary institutions to the factor markets, there is a gain in systemic productive efficiency at the microeconomic level. To test this hypothesis we develop a stochastic frontier econometric model with time-varying technical inefficiency effects and panel data. We analyze 106 projects of the Cédula da Terra Program in the states of Bahia, Maranhão, North of Minas Gerais, Pernambuco and Ceará, for the years 2000 and 2006. We conclude that this land reform has partial success in establishing productive organizations that evolve constantly their efficiency, wherein learning-by-doing is fundamental. Additionally, the governance effects are limited – the structure was not devised for institutional change – effects of transaction costs and conventions remain, causing market failure and persistence of inefficient forms of organization.