Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2010
Since writing “Cotton Competition,“ I have many times wished that I had never included the paragraph joining pages 632 and 633, since figures that were intended as no more than back-of-the-envelope confirmation of the econometric results have been cited as the central conclusions of the study. To make matters worse, the demand-shift formula was incorrectly applied, most seriously in the exaggerated decline in demand for American cotton between 1860 and 1870. For these reasons I am grateful to John Hanson for making these corrections and for giving me an opportunity to disown this particular halfdozen numbers.
1 For example, in Goldin, Claudia, Urban Slavery in the American South 1820–1860 (Chicago, 1976), p. 151Google Scholar.
2 The Political Economy of the Cotton South (New York, 1978), pp. 91–95, 100Google ScholarPubMed.
3 A theoretical basis for this conclusion was presented in the original article. See “Cotton Competition,” 630.