The Economics of US Civil War Conscription

Tim Perri ()

American Law and Economics Review, 2008, vol. 10, issue 2, pages 424-453

Abstract: US conscription in the Civil War is analyzed. Conscription was designed to gain federal control of enlistments, leaving state and local governments much of the fiscal and administrative responsibility for raising troops. Due to the hiring of substitutes, the payment of a fee to avoid service (commutation), and community-provided funds, only 2% of those who served were conscripted. Theory suggests that federal pay and local government bonuses increase as the marginal opposition by citizens to the number of reluctant draftees increases, and commutation could have lowered social cost. Instead, commutation was a binding ceiling on the price of substitutes. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2008

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahn015 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Economics of US Civil War Conscription (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:10:y:2008:i:2:p:424-453

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.oup.co.uk/journals

Access Statistics for this article

American Law and Economics Review is edited by Hon. Richard A. Posner

More articles in American Law and Economics Review from Oxford University Press
Address: Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().