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Preserving Slave Families for Profit: Traders' Incentives and Pricing in the New Orleans Slave Market

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2009

Charles W. Calomiris  and
Jonathan B. Pritchett
Charles W. Calomiris*
Affiliation:
Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia Business School, Columbia University, 3022 Broadway, Uris Hall 601, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: cc374@columbia.edu.
Jonathan B. Pritchett*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, 206 Tilton Hall, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118. E-mail: jprit@tulane.edu.
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Abstract

We investigate determinants of slave family discounts in the New Orleans slave market. We find large price discounts for families unrelated to scale effects, childcare costs, legal restrictions, or transport costs. We posit that because family members voluntarily cared for each other, sellers sometimes found it advantageous to keep families together (when families included needy or dependent members). Evidence from ship manifests carrying slaves for sale in New Orleans provides direct evidence for selectivity bias in explaining slave family discounts. Children likely to have been shipped with their mothers are 1 to 2 inches shorter than other children.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 986 - 1011
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2009

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