Occupational Choices: Economic Determinants of Land Invasions

Abstract

This study estimates the effect of economic conditions on redistributive conflict. We examine land invasions in Brazil using a panel dataset with over 50,000 municipality-year observations. Adverse economic shocks, instrumented by rainfall, cause the rural poor to invade and occupy large landholdings. This effect exhibits substantial heterogeneity by land inequality and land tenure systems, but not by other observable variables. In highly unequal municipalities, nega-tive income shocks cause twice as many land invasions as in municipalities with average land inequality. Cross-sectional estimates using fine within-region variation also suggest the impor-tance of land inequality in explaining redistributive conflict.