Abstract
This paper explores the political economy that leads frontier regions to be unequal. By focusing on the presence of a stable frontier between Castile and the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada in the late Middle Ages, our analysis shows how a historical border may generate differences in inequality that can become extremely persistent. We argue that the dynamics of being a militarily insecure frontier region created the conditions on the Castilian side for a high concentration of economic and political power. Through the application of a border specification and a spatial regression discontinuity design to municipal-level data, we find that municipalities on the Castilian side have a significantly higher percentage of landless workers, a greater accumulation of wealth, and more jurisdictional rights among the privileged orders, as measured in the eighteenth century. We use current indicators of land inequality and development to show that the effect of the frontier of Granada persists even today.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 54-98 |
| Journal | Journal of the European Economic Association |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 15 Dec 2016 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2017 |
Keywords
- Historical Frontiers
- Inequality
- Spanish Reconquest
- Spatial Regression Discontinuity Analysis
Access to Document
- Oto_Romero_Frontier_JEEA
Copyright (c), The Authors 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Economic Association. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvw004