IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v70y1988i4p654-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Free and Slave Labor in the Antebellum South: Perfect Substitutes or Different Inputs?

Author

Listed:
  • Field, Elizabeth B

Abstract

The substitutability between free and slave labor is examined, and the permissibility of aggregating the two in to a single labor variab le is investigated, using a translog production function. Slaves on large cotton farms worked in gangs; free labor was not observed to do so. Despite this, previous research has aggregated free and slave labor, and employed functional forms imposing strong restrictions on substitution. Estimation of the translog function shows that simple additive aggregation is not acceptable; on large farms, slaves and free labor were complements, while on small, nongang farms, they were substitutes. Copyright 1988 by MIT Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Field, Elizabeth B, 1988. "Free and Slave Labor in the Antebellum South: Perfect Substitutes or Different Inputs?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(4), pages 654-659, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:70:y:1988:i:4:p:654-59
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6535%28198811%2970%3A4%3C654%3AFASLIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T&origin=repec
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lagerlöf, Nils-Petter, 2016. "Born free," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 1-10.
    2. Links, Calumet & Green, Erik & Fourie, Johan, 2018. "Was Slavery a Flexible Form of Labour? Division of Labour and Location Specific Skills on the Eastern Cape Frontier," African Economic History Working Paper 42/2018, African Economic History Network.
    3. Li, Hongbin & Ma, Yueyuan & Meng, Lingsheng & Qiao, Xue & Shi, Xinzheng, 2017. "Skill complementarities and returns to higher education: Evidence from college enrollment expansion in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 10-26.
    4. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 1991. "Labor Demand: What Do We Know? What Don't We Know?," NBER Working Papers 3890, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:70:y:1988:i:4:p:654-59. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.