Land reform and individual property rights

Abstract

This paper gives a rational to the land reform processes that many latin American countries haveexperienced during this century. The reform usually consisted of transferes of land, withoutcompensation, from the owners of large estates to the landless peasants. The peasants, however,did not receive the individual ownership of the land. This was the case of Bolivia, México and Perú.This paper suggests that this type of reform was a measure intended to favor not the peasantry,but the landed elite who traditionally has held the political power in these countries. If the rents ofthe land are decreasing with the total amount of privately owned regime. I develop a modeleconomy in which all the individuals vote on the land to be expropriated to the landed elite; landand labor are complements in the production process. For economies in which land is therelatively abundant factor, the equlibrium features an amount of privately owned land less than thetotal and no peasant is given individual ownership of the land received.