Abstract: We examine changes in land inequality across Philippine provinces during the first fifteen years of American colonial rule and ask whether these changes were associated with provincial exposure to the preferential trade regime established by the Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909 and the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act of 1913. Using grouped farm-size tabulations from the 1903 and 1918 Censuses of the Philippine Islands, we construct comparable Gini coefficients for total farm holdings and cultivated area in 44 provinces. The mean total-landholding Gini declined from 0.701 to 0.688, whereas the mean cultivated-area Gini increased from 0.564 to 0.590; neither change is statistically significant. These contrasting movements occurred alongside substantial growth in population, cultivated area, farm numbers, and farms under different tenure arrangements, and they conceal considerable variation across provinces. In our preferred model, a ten-percentage-point higher tobacco share in 1903 is associated with a 0.0347 larger decline in the total-landholding Gini but has no comparable relationship with cultivated-area inequality. Descriptive patterns and sensitivity checks indicate, however, that this result is concentrated in the principal tobacco-producing provinces rather than shared broadly across the sample. Initial sugar specialization predicts neither inequality measure, and additional regressions identify no clear accompanying change in farm structure, land use, or tenure. Overall, we find no broad evidence that preferential trade equalized Philippine agriculture. The results instead underscore the importance of distinguishing inequality in recorded farm holdings from inequality in land actually under cultivation.
Speaker: Dr. Karl Robert Jandoc is Professor of Economics at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Hawaii. His research interests include theoretical and applied microeconomics, development economics, and energy economics. He has published in several international peer-reviewed journals, including Energy, International Journal of Game Theory, Review of Economic Design, among others. He has also served as a consultant for projects funded by various Philippine government agencies, USAID, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank.
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