Managerial Strategies of the Cotton South

Relative efficiencies of antebellum slave farms are suggested by many empirical studies. This paper considers a theoretical aspect of those results using a repeated principal-agent problem. Within its theoretical analysis, with relevance to profitability of slave farms, it will be shown that when inter-temporal punishments are necessary and when they can perform efficiently in production. Applying those theoretical results, some empirical studies on relative profitability and relative efficiencies are discussed. In the empirical study, relative efficiencies of each farm scale—free farms, task farms, and gang farms—are estimated region by region by a stochastic profit frontier model.