We explore the impact of encomienda, a forced-labor institution imposed by the Spanish throughout Latin America during three centuries, on long-term development outcomes in Colombia. Despite being a classically extractive institution, municipalities that had encomiendas in 1560 have higher...

Over two centuries, Colombia transferred vast quantities of land, equivalent to the entire UK landmass, mainly to landless peasants. And yet Colombia retains one of the highest concentrations of land ownership in the world. Why? We show that land reform's effects are highly bimodal. Most of...

The paper analyzes the effects of land reform on social development - poverty and land distribution - at the local level. Land reform in Colombia, understood as the allocation of public land to peasant, has granted 23 million hectares which comprises around 20% of Colombian territory and about...