Publications
Publications
- September 2014
- Journal of Economic History
Colonial Institutions, Trade Stocks, and the Diffusion of Elementary Education in Brazil, 1889–1930
By: Aldo Musacchio, Andre C. Martinez Fritscher and Martina Viarengo
Abstract
We show how the decentralization of fiscal responsibility among Brazilian states between 1889 and 1930 promoted an unequal expansion of public schooling. We document how the variation in state export tax revenues, product of commodity booms, explains improvements in expenditures on education per capita, literacy, and schools per children. Yet we also find that such improvements did not take place in states that had more slaves before abolition or those that cultivated cotton during colonial times. Thus, we explain radical changes in the ranking of states as a consequence of changes in fiscal institutions and their interaction with colonial institutions.
Keywords
Citation
Musacchio, Aldo, Andre C. Martinez Fritscher, and Martina Viarengo. "Colonial Institutions, Trade Stocks, and the Diffusion of Elementary Education in Brazil, 1889–1930." Journal of Economic History 74, no. 3 (September 2014): 730 –766.