For those who monitor relative wealth accumulation and are unmoved by divine empathy, a disincentive to increase the rate of full manumission is possible. Consider slavery as overt, formal constraints to zero or even negative wealth accumulation; and consider freedom of ex-slaves as the...

One approach to analyzing inequality is to compare average economic choices from a classical theoretical framework. Another approach considers the impact of the formation of society, through statutes and institutions, on average economic outcomes. This paper studies the effects of slavery on...

The debate over market/individual regulation and freedom is not a new discussion. However, a clear understanding of the freedoms (or the lack of freedoms) and their economic consequences on early black Americans provides an informative understanding to the freedoms (or the lack of freedoms), and...

Recent studies have used regression decomposition to analyze recent data and found that over seventy percent of the black-white wealth differences remained unexplained (See, e.g., Gittleman and Wolff 2000; Altonji, Doraszelski and Segal 2000; and Blau and Graham 1990). Their results are limited to the...

Modern pressures on median income workers to cost minimize and strategically invest, including a low interest-earning bank savings account, suggest the possibility of stagnation in closing the gap of wealth differences among groups. James Curtis Jr annualizes salaries of interns, employees and...