Participation in increasingly complex global production networks (GPNs) can generate new employment opportunities, new sources of income and better working conditions for vulnerable workers and poor households. Yet, for many, the pattern is one of ‘adverse incorporation', characterised by...

A protracted legislative battle culminated in the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888. We build a new data set of roll-call votes on 1884-1888 emancipation bills in the legislature, and connect it to local features of the districts. This allows us to unpack how the material interests of each...

Brazil is frequently portrayed as exhibiting persistent and structural economic inequality that is rooted in the early colonial experience, and is believed to undermine development in the long run. I construct original measures of agricultural inequality for 1905 in what is today Brazil's...

This paper studies the history of bonded labor in the plantations of São Paulo. Brazilian farmers proposed various contracts to bond immigrant households with a credit-labor interlinkage. The aim is to discuss why different laborrental arrangements were adopted. In particular, vis-à-vis the...