*The Brazil Studies Program at Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for
Latin American Studies presents*
*Privatized Subsoil Rights in Brazil: 1880-1940*
Presentation by Professor *Gail Triner*, Associate Professor of History,
Rutgers University. Prof. Triner is author of Banking and Economic
Development: Brazil, 1889-1930 (Palgrave Press, 2000). Her research
interests include the economic history of Brazil, emphasizing finance,
property rights and the environment, as well as the comparative history
of Latin American banking.
Professor Triner's presentation will assess the abrupt privatization of
property rights to the subsoil in Brazil in 1891 by considering both the
actions of miners and the outcome for the mining sector. Using new
databases of indicators of mining activity (concessions and land
transfers) and of mining law, Professor Triner finds that miners reacted
to both privatization and re-nationalization (in 1934) in expansive
manners. Neither change in the specification of rights led directly to
meeting their goal of large-scale expansion, of iron ore exports and
iron & steel manufacture, because of the complex interaction of other
fundamental institutions. Notably, the indivisibility of real assets and
the capital markets created insurmountable obstacles to private-sector
mining development. Her conclusions suggest Olsen's theories of
collective action as a framework for understanding the persistence of
these barriers. Professor Triner by points to an important instance in
which liberalized property rights were not sufficient to support
self-sustaining growth, and emphasizes the need for institutional
analysis to consider interaction, as well as the behavior of single,
well-defined institutions.
Date: *Friday, December 11 - TOMORROW*
Time: 4:00-6:00pm
Location: DRCLAS Resource Room S216 - CGIS South Building, 1730
Cambridge Street - HARVARD
Contact: Marcio Siwi, msiwi(a)fas.harvard.edu
This event is part of the Harvard-MIT Workshop on the Political Economy
of Development in Brazil which is led by Professors Aldo Musacchio
(Associate Professor and Marvin Bower Fellow, Harvard Business School)
and Ben Ross Schneider (Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology), the new Harvard-MIT Workshop seeks to promote
an ongoing interdisciplinary academic exchange among professors,
students, and practitioners in the Cambridge-Boston area with speakers
who are experts on the political economy of development in Brazil.
Show replies by date