IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8375.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Agricultural Labor Productivity in the Lower South, 1720-1800

Author

Listed:
  • Peter C. Mancall
  • Joshua L. Rosenbloom
  • Thomas Weiss

Abstract

Agriculture dominated the economy of eighteenth-century British America, and the pace of agricultural productivity advance was the primary determinant of the rate of economic growth. In this paper we offer new measures of agricultural productivity advance in the Lower South between 1720 and 1800. Past efforts and quantification have focused exclusively on the region's export performance. In addition to extending and refining measures of regional exports, we develop two new series based on the value of slave labor and on measurements of total agricultural production in the region. Despite differences in their short-term behavior, all of the indices show that long-run productivity improvements were modest at best, and may have been negative. Surprisingly, taking account of production for domestic consumption yields the most favorable long-term performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter C. Mancall & Joshua L. Rosenbloom & Thomas Weiss, 2001. "Agricultural Labor Productivity in the Lower South, 1720-1800," NBER Working Papers 8375, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8375
    Note: DAE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8375.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shepherd, James F. & Williamson, Samuel H., 1972. "The Coastal Trade of the British North American Colonies, 1768–1772," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(04), pages 783-810, December.
    2. Walsh, Lorena S., 1989. "Plantation Management in the Chesapeake, 1620–1820," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(02), pages 393-406, June.
    3. R. C. Nash, 1992. "South Carolina and the Atlantic economy in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 45(4), pages 677-702, November.
    4. Carr, Lois Green & Menard, Russell R., 1989. "Land, Labor, and Economies of Scale in Early Maryland: Some Limits to Growth in the Chesapeake System of Husbandry," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(02), pages 407-418, June.
    5. Peter C. Mancall & Joshua L. Rosenbloom & Thomas Weiss, 2000. "Slave Prices in the Lower South, 1722-1815," NBER Historical Working Papers 0120, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Thomas Weiss, 1989. "Economic Growth Before 1860: Revised Conjectures," NBER Historical Working Papers 0007, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Thomas J. Weiss, 1992. "U. S. Labor Force Estimates and Economic Growth, 1800-1860," NBER Chapters,in: American Economic Growth and Standards of Living before the Civil War, pages 19-78 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. David, Paul A., 1967. "The Growth of Real Product in the United States Before 1840: New Evidence, Controlled Conjectures," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(02), pages 151-197, June.
    9. Egnal, Marc, 1998. "New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195114829.
    10. Robert C. Allen, 1999. "Tracking the agricultural revolution in England," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 52(2), pages 209-235, May.
    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. R. C. Nash, 2010. "South Carolina indigo, European textiles, and the British Atlantic economy in the eighteenth century," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(2), pages 362-392, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N5 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries
    • N1 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations

    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:nbr:nberwo:8375. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: () or (Joanne Lustig). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.