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Collective Action and Policy Implementation: Evidence from Salvador Allende’s Expropriations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2021

Felipe González
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Instituto de Economía, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, Chile. E-mail: fagonza4@uc.cl.
Felipe Vial
Affiliation:
Ph.D. Candidate in Economics, Department of Economics, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA. E-mail: fvial@berkeley.edu.
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Abstract

The Cold War triggered the appearance of U.S.-sponsored re-distributive policies in Latin America with the goal of decreasing the influence of the Soviet Union. We study how organized groups of workers increased the intensity of one of the largest programs of the time, Salvador Allende’s land reform in Chile (1970–1973). Using original data in an event study research design, we find that the local political actions of workers—proxied by land invasions—affected the intensity and location of expropriations. We argue this result can be explained by a threat of political unrest.

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Article
Copyright
© The Economic History Association 2021
Figure 0

Table 1THE LAND REFORM PROGRAM UNDER DIFFERENT GOVERNMENTS

Figure 1

Figure 1CHILE’S AGRARIAN REFORM AND LAND INVASIONSNotes: Panel (A) presents the number of plots expropriated by month between January 1964 and December 1973. Panel (B) presents the number of land invasions per year between 1967 and 1971.Sources: Land reform data files and police reports of land invasions.

Figure 2

Figure 2LAND INVASIONS DURING SALVADOR ALLENDE’S GOVERNMENTNotes: Panel (A) presents the number of land invasions per month from the first month in which Salvador Allende held office until the last month with data on invasions. Panel (B) presents the number of counties experiencing their first land invasion.Source: Police reports of land invasions.

Figure 3

Figure 3LAND INVASIONS AND THE 1967 UNIONIZATION LAWNotes: Panel (A) presents a bin scatter plot and linear fit between the number of land invasions per 10,000 inhabitants in the period 1970–1972 (y-axis) and the number of unions per 10,000 inhabitants (x-axis) at the county level. Panel (B) presents a scatter plot and linear fit between the number of land invasions per 10,000 inhabitants in the period 1967–1970 (y-axis) and the number of unions per 10,000 inhabitants (x-axis) at the province level. Data on invasions before 1970 is only available at the province level.Sources: Police reports of land invasions and data from Gómez and Klein (1972).

Figure 4

Table 2DESCRIPTION OF COUNTIES BEFORE ALLENDE’S GOVERNMENT (1970–1973)

Figure 5

Figure 4LAND INVASIONS AND EXPROPRIATIONSNotes: These figures present estimates of Equation (1) with their corresponding 95 percent confidence interval. Each panel uses one of four different dependent variables.Sources: Land reform data files and police reports of land invasions.

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Table 3LAND INVASIONS AND EXPROPRIATIONS USING AN EVENT STUDY ANALYSIS

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Table 4LEGAL CAUSES USED TO EXPROPRIATE PLOTS AFTER INVASIONS

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Table 5ROBUSTNESS OF PARAMETRIC EVENT STUDY RESULTS

Figure 9

Figure 5COLLUSION BETWEEN WORKERS AND THE GOVERNMENTNotes: Panel (A) presents estimates of Equation (1) with their corresponding 95 percent confidence interval using only invasions within six months of Salvador Allende’s government (November 1970–May 1971). According to historical accounts these early invasions are unlikely to be orchestrated by the government. Panel (B) presents estimates using our main specification but augmented with region-by-month fixed effects, administrative unit in which the government appears to have organized some invasions. Both panels constitute evidence against the collusion mechanism.Sources: Land reform data files and police reports of land invasions.

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