Land Reform and Rural Conflict in Agrarian Economies Evidence from 1930s Spain

We empirically analyze the effect of land reform on rural conflicts in 1930s Spain. This reform is a classical example of property rights reform in a developing economy. Despite its prominence, the effects on rural conflict have been elusive due to lack of hard data. We fill this gap by collecting a novel high-frequency, municipality-level dataset. We consider five types of conflicts: land invasions, peasant strikes, clashes, petty theft and attacks on landowner assets. By performing a differences-in differences regression analysis, we document three main results. First, the land reform did not cause a generalized increase in conflicts, except for attacks on landowners’ assets. Second, this result masks substantial heterogeneity across implementation types. We find that a top-down, political implementation caused sizeable increases in invasions, petty theft, and attacks on owners’ assets. Third, we provide suggestive evidence that the fall in income of settlers (the, a priori , beneficiaries) explains the increase in social conflict. Our results highlight the importance of the design and implementation of social policies in the context of an agrarian, developing economy