This article examines the long-term consequences of a historical human capital intervention. The Jesuit order founded religious missions amongst the Guarani, in modern-day Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Missionaries instructed indigenous inhabitants in reading, writing and various crafts, before their expulsion in 1767. Using archival records and municipal census data, I demonstrate that educational attainment was […]

with William F. Maloney — Documento CEDE, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper. This paper offers the first systematic historical evidence on the role of a central factor in modern growth theory – the engineer. We collect cross-country and state level data on the population share of engineers for the Americas, and county level data […]

with William F. Maloney — The Economic Journal, Vol. 126, Issue 598, pages 2363–2401. Using subnational historical data, this paper establishes the within country persistence of economic activity in the New World over the last half millennium, a period including the trauma of the European colonization, the decimation of the native populations, and the imposition […]