Nuno Palma, UoM: African Slavery and the Reckoning of Brazil
| Dates: | 8 October 2025 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 18:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Speaker: | Nuno Palma |
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This talk is part of the seminar series of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Wed 8 Oct 2025, 5pm (UK time). This event will be in person, in Samuel Alexander Building, room A214. It can be followed online here: https://zoom.us/j/95860231166
Abstract: More enslaved Africans disembarked in Brazil than in any other country in the New World. Using new archival data (over 12,000 observations), we analyze the consequences of the slave trade. We build the first real wages and inequality series covering more than three centuries (1574 to 1920) in Brazil, and find that these were initially on a similar level to Europe, but as the slave trade increased, wages decreased and inequality increased. Real wages for unskilled workers became among the lowest in the world, and only recovered with the end of the slave trade. We use slave trade prohibition shocks (1808, 1831, and 1850) to estimate the causal effect of ending slave imports on wages and inequality. The first prohibition led to an average increase of 24% in unskilled wages and a decrease of 25% in wage inequality, while later prohibitions led to even larger wage increases. We propose a mechanism suggesting that the slave trade affected longrun development through a labor market supply channel.
Nuna Palma is Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester.
Speaker
Nuno Palma
Role: Professor of Economics
Organisation: The University of Manchester
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
A214
Samuel Alexander Building
Manchester
