095: Agrarian reforms and the property rights gap with Mike Albertus

In this episode, Michael speaks with Mike Albertus, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. They talk about Mike’s most recent book, Property Without Rights: Origins and Consequences of the Property Rights Gap. In the book, Mike is studying the results of agrarian reforms in Latin America, which are designed to redistribute land to rural peasants. Many of these reforms have left  a “gap”, or a lack of formalization, defensibility, and alienability of these new rural land rights. Mike’s main thesis of the book is that this gap has persisted in large part because of strategic decisions by national governments to keep rural landowners dependent on the state for their livelihood. Mike and Michael discuss this thesis as well as several other related arguments in the book.

Mikes website: http://www.michaelalbertus.com/

References:

Albertus, M. 2021. Property without Rights: Origins and Consequences of the Property Rights Gap. Cambridge University Press.