Crown Versus Settler Colonialism in Mexico

This paper examines the persistent effects of Crown versus settler colonialism. Exploiting a spatial regression discontinuity design in Mexico, I document that regions where the relative power of the colonial state over settler elites was higher exhibit higher historical and contemporary economic prosperity. In contrast to the view that Crown judges disproportionately weakened property rights, court records analyzed with natural language processing algorithms suggest they constrained settlers from expropriating indigenous lands. In the long-run, a feedback loop appears to have consolidated an emerging rural middle class, whose relative enfranchisement tied it less to patronage politics, encouraging public good provision and labor mobility out of agriculture.