The Amazon, the world's largest rain forest, is the last frontier in Brazil. The settlement of large and small farmers, squatters, miners, and loggers in this frontier during the past thirty years has given rise to violent conflicts over land as well as environmental duress. Titles, Conflict, and Land Use examines the institutional development involved in the process of land use and ownership in the Amazon and shows how this phenomenon affects the behavior of the economic actors. It explores the way in which the absence of well-defined property rights in the Amazon has led to both economic and social problems, including lost investment opportunities, high costs in protecting claims, and violence. The relationship between land reform and violence is given special attention. The book offers an important application of the New Institutional Economics by examining a rare instance where institutional change can be empirically observed. This allows the authors to study property rights as they emerge and evolve and to analyze the effects of Amazon development on the economy. In doing so they illustrate well the point that often the evolution of economic institutions will not lead to efficient outcomes. This book will be important not only to economists but also to Latin Americanists, political scientists, anthropologists, and scholars in disciplines concerned with the environment. Lee Alston is Professor of Economics, University of Illinois, and Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Gary Libecap is Professor of Economics and Law, University of Arizona, and Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Bernardo Mueller is Assistant Professor, Universidade de Brasilia.

Titles, Conflict, and Land Use: The Development of Property Rights and Land Reform on the Brazilian Amazon Frontier (Economics, Cognition, And Society)

Business & Money

Libecap, Gary D.

Alston, Lee J.

Mueller, Bernardo

Economics

University of Michigan Press

Combining insights from economics, political science, and history, Professors Alston and Ferrie show how the timing and extent of the growth of the American welfare state from the Civil War until the mid-1960s was influenced by the Southern agricultural elite. Before the mechanization of Southern agriculture, the rural landed interests had an economic incentive to keep labor cheap and dependent. They accomplished this through their disproportionate political power at the local, state, and national level, which enabled them to maintain a discriminatory legal environment and prevent federal interference in labor relations.

Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State: Economics, Politics, and Institutions in the South, 1865–1965 (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)

Ferrie, Joseph P.

Cambridge University Press

Brazil is the world's sixth-largest economy, and for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century was one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. While the country underwent two decades of unrelenting decline from 1975 to 1994, the economy has rebounded dramatically. How did this nation become an emerging power? Brazil in Transition looks at the factors behind why this particular country has successfully progressed up the economic development ladder. The authors examine the roles of beliefs, leadership, and institutions in the elusive, critical transition to sustainable development.
Analyzing the last fifty years of Brazil's history, the authors explain how the nation's beliefs, centered on social inclusion yet bound by orthodox economic policies, led to institutions that altered economic, political, and social outcomes. Brazil's growth and inflation became less variable, the rule of law strengthened, politics became more open and competitive, and poverty and inequality declined. While these changes have led to a remarkable economic transformation, there have also been economic distortions and inefficiencies that the authors argue are part of the development process.
Brazil in Transition demonstrates how a dynamic nation seized windows of opportunity to become a more equal, prosperous, and rules-based society.

Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership, and Institutional Change (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

Melo, Marcus André

Pereira, Carlos

Princeton University Press

Institutional and Organizational Analysis: Concepts and Applications (New Approaches to Economic and Social History)

What explains the great variability in economic growth and political development across countries? Institutional and organizational analysis has developed since the 1970s into a powerful toolkit, which argues that institutions and norms rather than geography, culture, or technology are the primary causes of sustainable development. Institutions are rules that recognized authorities create and enforce. Norms are rules created by long-standing patterns of behavior, shared by people in a society or organization. They combine to play a role in all organizations, including governments, firms, churches, universities, gangs, and even families. This introduction to the concepts and applications of institutional and organizational analysis uses economic history, economics, law, and political science to inform its theoretical framework. Institutional and organizational analysis becomes the basis to show why the economic and political performance of countries worldwide have not converged, and reveals the lessons to be learned from it for business, law, and public policy.

Alston, Eric

Nonnenmacher, Tomas

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Books by Alston, Lee J.