The Domestic United States Slave Trade: New Evidence

Freudenberger, Herman; Pritchett, Jonathan B.

doi:10.2307/204955

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…15 Note that, as was the case in New Orleans, the original owner could buy back his own slaves (Freudenberger and Pritchett, 1991). These owners may have decided to buy back the slave given that the proposed bid was less than their reservation value, or in order to cancel prior sales and return the purchase price to the buyer.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric Information and Adverse Selection in Mauritian Slave Auctions

2008

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Information asymmetry is a necessary prerequisite for testing adverse selection. This paper applies this sequence of tests to Mauritian slave auctions. The theory of dynamic auctions with private and common values suggests that when an informed participant is known to be active, uninformed bidders will be more aggressive and the selling price will be higher. We conjecture that observable family links between buyer and seller entailed superior information and find a strong price premium when a related buyer purchased a slave, indicative of information asymmetry. We then test for adverse selection using sale motivation. Our results indicate large discounts on voluntary as compared to involuntary sales. Consistent with adverse selection, the market anticipated that predominantly low-productivity slaves would be brought to the market in voluntary sales. JEL Classification: D 82, N 37

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric Information and Adverse Selection in Mauritian Slave Auctions

2008

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“…This subject is the focus of numerous articles and monographs and enters every book that attempts a comprehensive treatment of American slavery (Phillips 1918;Gray 1933;Stampp 1956;Fogel and Engerman 1974;Genovese 1974;Fogel 1989). Traders who were satisfying demands for labor in the West usually preferred individuals who were physically mature enough for work but also sufficiently young to justify an investment in transportation, roughly age 11 to 30 years (Freudenberger and Pritchett 1991). Although mothers could have been separated from their young children, the practice appears to have been infrequent, and was illegal in Louisiana after 1806 (Calomiris and Pritchett 2009).…”

Section: Richard H Steckel and Nicolas Ziebarthmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Troublesome Statistic: Traders and Coastal Shipments in the Westward Movement of Slaves

Steckel¹,

Ziebarth²

2013

J. Econ. Hist.

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We analyze all slave manifests housed at the National Archives—some 24,400 documents involving approximately 135,000 slaves who were transported in the coastwise trade from 1810 to 1861. The manifests list the name of the owner or shipper, which allows us to match names with traders found in other sources. We also utilize demographic characteristics of the manifests to estimate the probability that a trader organized the shipment. Commercial transactions increased over the antebellum period, and on average were responsible for approximately 55 percent of slaves who migrated from Atlantic to Gulf coast ports. “No one has ever suggested a method for finding what proportion of the slaves transported from one state to another were taken by their original masters or their heirs for their own use.”Bancroft 1931, p. 397

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“…We use the New Orleans Slave Sale Sample, originally collected under the direction of Fogel and Engerman (1976), and used previously by Kotlikoff (1979Kotlikoff ( , 1992, Greenwald and Glasspiegel (1983), and Freudenberger and Pritchett (1991). During the first part of the nineteenth century, New Orleans was the center of slave trading in the South.…”

Section: Modeling Slave Prices From New Orleans Sales: Data and Methomentioning

confidence: 99%

Preserving Slave Families for Profit: Traders' Incentives and Pricing in the New Orleans Slave Market

Calomiris

Pritchett²

2009

J. Econ. Hist.

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We investigate determinants of slave family discounts in the New Orleans slave market. We find large price discounts for families unrelated to scale effects, childcare costs, legal restrictions, or transport costs. We posit that because family members voluntarily cared for each other, sellers sometimes found it advantageous to keep families together (when families included needy or dependent members). Evidence from ship manifests carrying slaves for sale in New Orleans provides direct evidence for selectivity bias in explaining slave family discounts. Children likely to have been shipped with their mothers are 1 to 2 inches shorter than other children.

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The Domestic United States Slave Trade: New Evidence

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Asymmetric Information and Adverse Selection in Mauritian Slave Auctions

Asymmetric Information and Adverse Selection in Mauritian Slave Auctions

A Troublesome Statistic: Traders and Coastal Shipments in the Westward Movement of Slaves

Preserving Slave Families for Profit: Traders' Incentives and Pricing in the New Orleans Slave Market

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