IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/181.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Managerial Strategies of the Cotton South

Author

Listed:
  • Saito, Tetsuya

Abstract

Relative efficiencies of antebellum slave farms are suggested by many empirical studies. This paper considers a theoretical aspect of those results using a repeated principal-agent problem. Within its theoretical analysis, with relevance to profitability of slave farms, it will be shown that when inter-temporal punishments are necessary and when they can perform efficiently in production. Applying those theoretical results, some empirical studies on relative profitability and relative efficiencies are discussed. In the empirical study, relative efficiencies of each farm scale—free farms, task farms, and gang farms—are estimated region by region by a stochastic profit frontier model.

Suggested Citation

  • Saito, Tetsuya, 2005. "Managerial Strategies of the Cotton South," MPRA Paper 181, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Aug 2006.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:181
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/181/1/MPRA_paper_181.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. R. Rees & John Komlos & Ngo V. Long & Ulrich Woitek, 2003. "Optimal food allocation in a slave economy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 16(1), pages 21-36, February.
    2. Jonathan Levin, 2003. "Relational Incentive Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 835-857, June.
    3. Domar, Evsey D. & Machina, Mark J., 1984. "On the Profitability of Russian Serfdom," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(4), pages 919-955, December.
    4. David, Paul A. & Temin, Peter, 1974. "Slavery: The Progressive Institution?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(3), pages 739-783, September.
    5. Radner, Roy, 1985. "Repeated Principal-Agent Games with Discounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(5), pages 1173-1198, September.
    6. Fenoaltea, Stefano, 1984. "Slavery and Supervision in Comparative Perspective: A Model," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(3), pages 635-668, September.
    7. T. Bergstrom, 1971. "On the Existence and Optimality of Competitive Equilibrium for a Slave Economy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(1), pages 23-36.
    8. Toman, J.T., 2005. "The gang system and comparative advantage," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 310-323, April.
    9. Chwe, Michael Suk-Young, 1990. "Why Were Workers Whipped? Pain in a Principal-Agent Model," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(403), pages 1109-1121, December.
    10. Battese, George E. & Coelli, Tim J., 1988. "Prediction of firm-level technical efficiencies with a generalized frontier production function and panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 387-399, July.
    11. Fogel, Robert W & Engerman, Stanley L, 1980. "Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 672-690, September.
    12. William L. Miller, 1965. "A Note on the Importance of the Interstate Slave Trade of the Ante Bellum South," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 73(2), pages 181-181.
    13. Fogel, Robert W & Engerman, Stanley L, 1977. "Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 275-296, June.
    14. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    15. Field, Elizabeth B, 1988. "The Relative Efficiency of Slavery Revisited: A Translog Production Function Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 543-549, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haluk I. Ergin & Serdar Sayan, 1997. "A Microeconomic Analysis of Slavery in Comparison to Free Labor Economies," Economic History 9710001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Richard C. Sutch, 2018. "The Economics of African American Slavery: The Cliometrics Debate," NBER Working Papers 25197, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Toman, J.T., 2005. "The gang system and comparative advantage," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 310-323, April.
    4. Daron Acemoglu & Alexander Wolitzky, 2011. "The Economics of Labor Coercion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(2), pages 555-600, March.
    5. Trevon Logan, 2015. "A Time (Not) Apart: A Lesson in Economic History from Cotton Picking Books," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 301-322, December.
    6. Lagerlöf, Nils-Petter, 2016. "Born free," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 1-10.
    7. Valeriy Makarov & Albert Bakhtizin, 2014. "The Estimation Of The Regions’ Efficiency Of The Russian Federation Including The Intellectual Capital, The Characteristics Of Readiness For Innovation, Level Of Well-Being, And Quality Of Life," Economy of region, Centre for Economic Security, Institute of Economics of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, vol. 1(4), pages 9-30.
    8. Kui-Wai Li & Tung Liu & Lihong Yun, 2007. "Technology Progress, Efficiency, and Scale of Economy in Post-reform China," Working Papers 200701, Ball State University, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2007.
    9. Rosen Azad Chowdhury & Dilshad Jahan & Tapas Mishra & Mamata Parhi, 2023. "A Quality Dimension? A Re-appraisal of Financial Development and Economic Growth Nexus in a Quality-Quantity Setting," Working Papers 2023-02, Swansea University, School of Management.
    10. B. E. Bravo‐Ureta & L. Rieger, 1990. "Alternative Production Frontier Methodologies And Dairy Farm Efficiency," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 215-226, May.
    11. Tai-Hsin Huang & Yi-Huang Chiu & Chih-Ying Mao, 2021. "Imposing Regularity Conditions to Measure Banks’ Productivity Changes in Taiwan Using a Stochastic Approach," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 28(2), pages 273-303, June.
    12. Alfonso Flores-Lagunes & William C. Horrace & Kurt E. Schnier, 2007. "Identifying technically efficient fishing vessels: a non-empty, minimal subset approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(4), pages 729-745.
    13. Tung Liu, 2020. "Measuring Technical, Allocative inefficiency, and Cost Inefficiency by Applying Duality Theory," Working Papers 202001, Ball State University, Department of Economics, revised Jun 2020.
    14. Goyal, S.K. & Suhag, K.S. & Pandey, U.K., 2006. "An Estimation of Technical Efficiency of Paddy Farmers in Haryana State of India," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 61(1), pages 1-15.
    15. Nils-Petter Lagerlof, 2002. "The Roads To and From Serfdom," Macroeconomics 0212011, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Sabrina Auci & Laura Castellucci & Manuela Coromaldi, 2021. "How does public spending affect technical efficiency? Some evidence from 15 European countries," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 108-130, January.
    17. Stefania P.S. Rossi & Markus Schwaiger & Gerhard Winkler, 2005. "Managerial Behavior and Cost/Profit Efficiency in the Banking Sectors of Central and Eastern European Countries," Working Papers 96, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    18. I. Fraser & W. Horrace, 2003. "Technical Efficiency of Australian Wool Production: Point and Confidence Interval Estimates," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 169-190, September.
    19. Md Zobaer Hasan & Anton Abdulbasah Kamil & Adli Mustafa & Md Azizul Baten, 2012. "Stochastic Frontier Model Approach for Measuring Stock Market Efficiency with Different Distributions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-9, May.
    20. Arandarage Mayura Prasad Arandara & Shingo Takahashi, 2023. "Productivity analysis of Sri Lankan cooperative banks: input distance function approach," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 93-117, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Relative efficiency of antebellum slave farms; repeated principal-agent problem; profit maximizing contracts; stick and carrot on plantations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N51 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:181. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.