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...

This paper examines how trust on institutions and organizations are shaped according to age and exposure to violence during La Violencia. It also evaluates how people's actual trust on different groups (out-group trust) changes in municipalities that were exposed to violence in comparison to...

Spanish Abstract: Este trabajo examina el impacto de la institución colonial de la Encomienda sobre la violencia del conflicto armado del siglo XX en Colombia. A pesar de haber sido una institución extractiva, hay evidencia que muestra que las regiones en donde estuvo presente desarrollaron...

I examine 19th century Mexico for a better understanding of how and why it was so difficult to create the institutions of a modern state. I show that Mexico suffered from a vicious cycle in that period, something that is probably common to many developing countries, in that they needed a large...

States' governance of gender is not unidirectional. In addition to 'stagnation' and 'progress', there can be an active reversal of rights already granted to women. Using the case of abortion rights in El Salvador, this paper investigates the following questions: What are the likely causes of...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of land concentration prompted by the distribution of disentailed Church land during the second half of the 19th century on the accumulation of human capital, in early 20th century Colombia1. Utilizing existing primary sources on the process of...

Este trabajo estudia el proceso de manumisión en Colombia haciendo uso de información individual de hasta 16.812 esclavos recolectada en diferentes archivos del país. El documento, en su primera parte, describe tanto el proceso histórico que llevó a la manumisión como la normatividad...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of land concentration prompted by the distribution of disentailed Church land during the second half of the 19th century on the accumulation of human capital, in early 20th century Colombia. Utilizing existing primary sources on the process of land...

What difference does it make if the state makes people vote? The question is central to normative debates about the rights and duties of citizens in a democracy, and to contemporary policy debates in a number of Latin American countries over what actions states should take to encourage electoral...

This paper addresses gender equality in Cuba, tracing its development from the days of the revolution to present day with an emphasis on women working in the field of law. This article is being published by the Florida Bar International Law Section Journal for its Spring 2016 edition, and is...