Abstract
“The Economics of Slavery (and Other Studies in Econometric History)” by Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer is both a well-done economic analysis and an empirical test of the impacts of slavery on income growth and development in the United States in the nineteenth century. Applying the “cliometric” methodology, they concluded “that slavery was an efficient, maintainable form of economic organization” in the ante bellum South. Furthermore, they also tested the assertion that slavery has led to inefficiency due to the loss of capital that might otherwise have gone into industrialisation and diversification. And they found no such empirical evidence: slavery “did not of itself operate against southern development”.
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Notes
- 1.
Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edwin Cannan, ed. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd. 1904. Library of Economics and Liberty, Book I, Chapter VIII (Of the Wages of Labour), § 40. [Online] available from http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN3.html; accessed 24 January 2011.
- 2.
Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer: The Economics of Slavery (and Other Studies in Econometric History), Washington DC: Library of Congress 2009 (Second Paperback Printing), originally published: Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co. 1964.
- 3.
See p. 45.
- 4.
Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer: The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 66 (1958), Issue 2, p. 121.
- 5.
Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman: Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Boston: Little, Brown and Company 1974.
- 6.
Thomas Weiss, Review on “Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery”, Project 2001: Significant Works in Economic History, Posted Thu, 2001-11-15, http://www.eh.net/node/2749. Weiss provides interested readers with a long updated reading lists that refers to the most relevant publications about the economics of slavery.
- 7.
See Weiss, http://www.eh.net/node/2749.
- 8.
(2004). Historical Census Browser. Retrieved February 12, 2011, from the University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center: http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html.
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Straubhaar, T. (2012). Some Short Thoughts on “The Economics of Slavery”. In: Backhaus, J. (eds) The Liberation of the Serfs. The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences, vol 14. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0085-1_4
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