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A Peculiar Sample: The Selection of Slaves for the New Orleans Market

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Jonathan B. Pritchett  and
Herman Freudenberger
Jonathan B. Pritchett
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118
Herman Freudenberger
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118
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Abstract

Domestic slave traders selected taller slaves for shipment to the New Orleans market in order to increase their profits. Because traded slaves made up a large share of the slaves shipped coastwise, age/height profiles constructed from the shipping manifests are biased upwards. The extent of the bias appears to be small for adult slaves but not for children; those listed on the manifests were taller than the general population of a comparable age.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 109 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

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