Showing 1 - 10 of 340
The dispute that resulted in the secession of eleven Southern states from the Union and the ensuing Civil War proximately concerned the geographical expansion of slavery, but ultimately bore on the existence of the institution of slavery itself. This paper asks why in 1861 after seventy years of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012468905
The traditional historical narrative claims that White women were rarely involved in market transactions for enslaved people in the antebellum United States. Using transaction records, notary statements, and runaway advertisements, we provide the first quantitative estimates of the extent of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014544806
To engage with the large literature on the economic effects of slavery, we use antebellum census data to test for statistical differences at the 1860 free-slave border. We find evidence of lower population density, less intensive land use, and lower farm values on the slave side. Half of the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014576669
Why does inequality vary across societies? We advance the hypothesis that in a market economy, where earning differentials reflect variations in productive traits, a significant component of the differences in income inequality across societies can be attributed to variation in societal...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014337813
We re-characterize American slavery as inefficient, whereby emancipation generated substantial aggregate economic gains. Coercive labor markets were severely distorted, with the social marginal cost of labor substantially above its marginal benefit. Production during enslavement came at immense...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014421183
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10000633426
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10001511996
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10001511998
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10001390799
historians have agreed are pivotal in American history' during the period 1925-1937. Using information we collected on strike …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012470956