TY - JOUR AU - Acemoglu,Daron AU - Bautista,María Angélica AU - Querubín,Pablo AU - Robinson,James A. TI - Economic and Political Inequality in Development: The Case of Cundinamarca, Colombia JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 13208 PY - 2007 Y2 - June 2007 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13208 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13208.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Daron Acemoglu Department of Economics MIT, E52-380B 50 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142-1347 Tel: 617/253-1927 Fax: 617/253-1330 E-Mail: daron@mit.edu Maria A. Bautista Brown University Department of Political Science 36 Prospect Street Providence, RI 02912 E-Mail: ma.bautista@yahoo.com Pablo Querubin Harvard Academy 1727 Cambridge Street, Room E106 Cambridge, MA 02138 Website: http://econ-www.mit.edu/grad/querubin Tel: 6173727322 E-Mail: pablo.querubin@gmail.com James A. Robinson Harvard University Department of Government N309, 1737 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/496-2839 Fax: 617/495-0438 E-Mail: jrobinson@gov.harvard.edu AB - Is inequality harmful for economic growth? Is the underdevelopment of Latin America related to its unequal distribution of wealth? A recently emerging consensus claims not only that economic inequality has detrimental effects on economic growth in general, but also that differences in economic inequality across the American continent during the 19th century are responsible for the radically different economic performances of the north and south of the continent. In this paper we investigate this hypothesis using unique 19th century micro data on land ownership and political office holding in the state of Cundinamarca, Colombia. Our results shed considerable doubt on this consensus. Even though Cundinamarca is indeed more unequal than the Northern United States at the time, within Cundinamarca municipalities that were more unequal in the 19th century (as measured by the land gini) are more developed today. Instead, we argue that political rather than economic inequality might be more important in understanding long-run development paths and document that municipalities with greater political inequality, as measured by political concentration, are less developed today. We also show that during this critical period the politically powerful were able to amass greater wealth, which is consistent with one of the channels through which political inequality might affect economic allocations. Overall our findings shed doubt on the conventional wisdom and suggest that research on long-run comparative development should investigate the implications of political inequality as well as those of economic inequality. ER -