Reconciling Reversal of Fortune in early United States Development within a Unified Growth Framework

Chi Pui Ho

Annals of Economics and Finance, 2022, vol. 23, issue 2, 341-383

Abstract: This paper attempts to explain demographic-economic development in the Thirteen Colonies/United States during AD1700-AD1860, when slavery was an important feature in the period. This paper models how the use of slaves in production affected long-run productivity. The key hypothesis of the model is that productivity growth is positively related to the fraction of the workforce comprised of free workers, who had property rights over their production. The geographic and political environments in US-South relatively favored the buildup of Black slaves, through the above model mechanism it suffered from slower productivity growth and a reversal of fortune.

Keywords: Reversal of fortune; Unified Growth Theory; Transatlantic Migration and Slavery Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N10 O50 P52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://down.aefweb.net/AefArticles/aef230208Ho.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cuf:journl:y:2022:v:23:i:2:ho

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Economics and Finance is currently edited by Heng-fu Zou

More articles in Annals of Economics and Finance from Society for AEF Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Qiang Gao ().