IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/66865.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Being Bad by Being Good: Owner and Captain Value-Added in the Slave Trade

Author

Listed:
  • Dalton, John
  • Leung, Tin Cheuk

Abstract

We use slave voyage data from 18th century Great Britain and France to answer two questions: 1) How important was the managerial quality of owners and captains in slave trading? and 2) What explains the substantial variation in managerial quality? Utilizing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, in which we observe the performance of owners and captains in each of their voyages, we follow the teacher evaluation literature to estimate the value-added of owners and captains to slave voyage output, i.e. the number of slaves arriving in the Americas. Several results emerge. First, if we replace all owners with the 90th percentile owner in the country, slave voyage output would be 15% and 25% higher than if we replaced all owners with the 10th percentile owner in Great Britain and in France. This 90/10 ratio is 1.27 for British captains. Second, owner value-added is negatively associated with family businesses and positively associated with the level of competition. A comparison of owner value-added before and after the unexpected outbreak of the Seven Years' War, which historians suggest decreased (increased) competition in the French (British) slave trade, suggests competition's effect on owner value-added might be causal.

Suggested Citation

  • Dalton, John & Leung, Tin Cheuk, 2015. "Being Bad by Being Good: Owner and Captain Value-Added in the Slave Trade," MPRA Paper 66865, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:66865
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/66865/1/MPRA_paper_66865.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas J. Kane & Douglas O. Staiger, 2008. "Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement: An Experimental Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 14607, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1351-1408.
    3. Nicholas Bloom & Carol Propper & Stephan Seiler & John Van Reenen, 2015. "The Impact of Competition on Management Quality: Evidence from Public Hospitals," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 457-489.
    4. Lucia Foster & John Haltiwanger & Chad Syverson, 2008. "Reallocation, Firm Turnover, and Efficiency: Selection on Productivity or Profitability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 394-425, March.
    5. Chad Syverson, 2004. "Market Structure and Productivity: A Concrete Example," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1181-1222, December.
    6. Kane, Thomas J. & Rockoff, Jonah E. & Staiger, Douglas O., 2008. "What does certification tell us about teacher effectiveness? Evidence from New York City," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 615-631, December.
    7. Yair Mundlak, 1961. "Empirical Production Function Free of Management Bias," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 43(1), pages 44-56.
    8. Sass, Tim R. & Hannaway, Jane & Xu, Zeyu & Figlio, David N. & Feng, Li, 2012. "Value added of teachers in high-poverty schools and lower poverty schools," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 104-122.
    9. Nicholas Bloom & Benn Eifert & Aprajit Mahajan & David McKenzie & John Roberts, 2013. "Does Management Matter? Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(1), pages 1-51.
    10. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2009. "Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1403-1448.
    11. Postma,Johannes, 1990. "The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1815," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521365857, October.
    12. Duquette, Nicolas J., 2014. "Revealing the Relationship Between Ship Crowding and Slave Mortality," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(2), pages 535-552, June.
    13. Nathan Nunn & Diego Puga, 2012. "Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(1), pages 20-36, February.
    14. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 1978. "On the Size Distribution of Business Firms," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 508-523, Autumn.
    15. Dalton, John T. & Leung, Tin Cheuk, 2015. "Dispersion and distortions in the trans-Atlantic slave trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 412-425.
    16. Thomas J. Holmes & James A. Schmitz, 2010. "Competition and Productivity: A Review of Evidence," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 619-642, September.
    17. Whatley, Warren, 2012. "The Gun-Slave Cycle in the 18th century British slave trade in Africa," MPRA Paper 44492, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Hogerzeil, Simon J. & Richardson, David, 2007. "Slave Purchasing Strategies and Shipboard Mortality: Day-to-Day Evidence from the Dutch African Trade, 1751–1797," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(1), pages 160-190, March.
    19. Gompers, Paul & Kovner, Anna & Lerner, Josh & Scharfstein, David, 2010. "Performance persistence in entrepreneurship," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 18-32, April.
    20. Fenske, James & Kala, Namrata, 2015. "Climate and the slave trade," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 19-32.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Boxell, Levi, 2019. "Droughts, conflict, and the African slave trade," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 774-791.

    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. Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Does competition raise productivity through improving management quality?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 306-316, May.
    2. Nicholas Bloom & Benn Eifert & Aprajit Mahajan & David McKenzie & John Roberts, 2013. "Does Management Matter? Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(1), pages 1-51.
    3. Maloney, William F. & Sarrias, Mauricio, 2017. "Convergence to the managerial frontier," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 284-306.
    4. Nicholas Bloom & Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen, 2010. "Recent Advances in the Empirics of Organizational Economics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 105-137, September.
    5. Bloom, Nicholas & Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Human Resource Management and Productivity," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 19, pages 1697-1767, Elsevier.
    6. Bloom, Nicholas & Iacovone, Leonardo & Pereira-Lopez, Mariana & Van Reenen, John, 2022. "Management and misallocation in Mexico," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117752, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Luis Garicano & Claire Lelarge & John Van Reenen, 2016. "Firm Size Distortions and the Productivity Distribution: Evidence from France," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(11), pages 3439-3479, November.
    8. Claudia Custodio & Diogo Mendes & Daniel Metzger, 2021. "The impact of financial education of executives on financial practices of medium and large enterprises," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2105, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    9. Nguyen Tuan Kiet & Ho Huu Phuong Chi & Trinh Cong Duc, 2022. "Management practices of firms: A study in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(5), pages 1185-1208, July.
    10. Michael Peters, 2012. "Why Do Inefficient Firms Survive? Management and Economic Development," 2012 Meeting Papers 497, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Troy D. Smith, 2015. "Private Equity Investment in India: Efficiency vs Expansion," Discussion Papers 15-011, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    12. Mu-Jeung Yang & Lorenz Kueng & Bryan Hong, 2015. "Business Strategy and the Management of Firms," NBER Working Papers 20846, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2010. "Why Do Management Practices Differ across Firms and Countries?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(1), pages 203-224, Winter.
    14. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2013. "Misallocation and productivity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 1-10, January.
    15. Nick Zubanov & W.S. Siebert, 2009. "Management economics in a large UK retailer," CPB Discussion Paper 125, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    16. Francisco Queiró, 2022. "Entrepreneurial Human Capital and Firm Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(4), pages 2061-2100.
    17. Nicholas Bloom & Raffaella Sadun, 2012. "The Organization of Firms Across Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(4), pages 1663-1705.
    18. Nicholas Bloom & Christos Genakos & Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen, 2011. "Management Practices Across Firms and Countries," CEP Discussion Papers dp1109, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    19. Boxell, Levi, 2019. "Droughts, conflict, and the African slave trade," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 774-791.
    20. Stefan Bender & Nicholas Bloom & David Card & John Van Reenen & Stefanie Wolter, 2018. "Management Practices, Workforce Selection, and Productivity," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(S1), pages 371-409.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    slave trades; managerial ability; value-added; competition; family business;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N77 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Africa; Oceania

    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:66865. 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.