Slavery, Inequality, and Economic Development in the Americas:
By Nathan Nunn. Institutions and Economic Performance, 2007
165 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Recent research argues that among former New World colonies a nation's past dependence on slave labor was important for its subsequent economic development (Engerman and Sokoloff, 1997, 2002, 2006; Sokoloff and Engerman, 2000). These studies argue that specialization in plantation agriculture based on slave labor caused economic inequality, which concentrated power in the hands of a small elite, adversely affecting the development of domestic institutions needed for sustained economic growth. I test for these relationships looking both across former New World economies and across states and counties within the U.S. I find evidence that slave use is negatively correlated with subsequent economic development. However, I do not find evidence that this negative relationship is driven by large scale plantation slavery, or that the relationship works through slavery’s effect on economic inequality.
Subfields: Anthropology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a3be1b1f567e321b1ef001a32d1603e440a7baff
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In Anthropology
Citations in the corpus
- Landownership Concentration and the Expansion of Education (2016, result): “Nunn (2008) also provides some support to the Engerman and Sokoloff’s hypothesis finding that slavery is detrimental for successive economic performances.”
- Domestic Institutions as a Source of Comparative Advantage (2013, unknown): “…origins have wide-ranging impacts on a variety of outcomes including military conscription, labor market regulations, and even economic growth (La Porta et al., 2008).4 Recognizing this concern with the IV estimates, Nunn (2007) undertakes an auxiliary procedure to address the issue of causality.”