Recent papers about economic history

Naomi Lamoreaux “Beyond the Old and the New: Economic History in the United States”

Claude Diebolt and Mike Haupert Clio’s Contributions to Economics and History

Isn't this what we are supposed to do?

Pseudoerasmus recently posted an analysis of the issues involved in the slave productivity debate. He also sent me a link to an interesting discussion between Edward Baptist and Trevon Logan on Twitter. I had previously noted Logan's review of Baptist's book in the JEH, which should be mandatory reading for anyone starting work in American history, economic or otherwise. I looked at some related tweets and saw that at one point Baptist wondered who his critics were and what motivated them. He seemed bothered by the anonymity of Pseudoerasmus. I've heard that Alexander Hamilton and William Sealy Gosset published some interesting stuff under pseudonyms. Anyone who wants to know more about who I am can click on the link to my CV in the upper right hand corner. I know John Clegg is a historical sociologist at NYU. I don’t know anything more about him. Pseudoerasmus is an anonymous blogger.   I don’t know who he is, and I don’t care. I evaluate what he writes, not who I think he is. I also don’t know anything about Edward Baptist other than what he writes. For all I know he might be a great guy. He may donate to the food bank and volunteer at the homeless shelter. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he does both. I haven’t written about who he is, I’ve written my responses to things he has written.

As for the question of motivation, isn’t this what we are supposed to do? One person makes an argument: they state a claim and try to support it with logic and evidence. Other people respond to it. If they think the argument is wrong they say so and explain their reasoning. In Time on the Cross, Fogel and Engerman stated their theses, their reasoning and their evidence. Many economists and historians pointed out errors in all three. To the best of my knowledge, they did not ask what is motivating these guys; they (and their students) went looking for more evidence. 

When I was at Washington University I worked with Doug North (be the way yesterday was Doug’s birthday). Over a very long career, Doug was wrong more than a few times. For example, the central thesis of Economic Growth of the United States does not seem to have been supported by subsequent research. He once told me that the only real benefit of getting older was that he had learned a lot of things that did not work. Doug always seemed to be much more concerned about what he was going to do than with what he had done. Again, he once told me that his aim was to correct his errors before others did. In our economic history seminars we did not sit around telling each other how wonderful we were. My recollection is that people tried to find every potential flaw. I once asked John Nye if he hadn't been awfully hard on someone (not me). John said, "He's a big boy."

So, I don’t understand this question about the identity of critics or their motivation. It doesn’t matter who I am. It matters what I write. I do it because it’s what I am supposed to do.   Edward Baptist wrote a book related to American economic history. My primary field is American economic history. The book was getting a lot of attention, and I thought it was seriously flawed. I wrote about those flaws.

More and more capitalism and slavery

Now Baptist responds to Clegg at the Junto. Have I ever mentioned that the Junto is one of the best blogs out there. I think I have. I find Baptist's response to be about as well reasoned and persuasive as his other work.

Even More on Capitalism and Slavery

The Junto Blog post regarding slavery and capitalism prompted a discussion in the comment section, which Edward Baptist joined in on. He argued that he had not misrepresented the work of Olmstead and Rhode but then doubled down and presented an even more misleading version of their work.

Baptist writes that

 “I argue that they adopt a new system around 1800, more or less, as evidenced by the narratives of survivors, which is supported by the very existence of systematic cotton-picking data itself. (It’s unclear, in Olmstead and Rohde’s argument) why their data even exists.)  

In their paper in the Journal of Economic History, Olmstead and Rhode state that planters kept record books of the pickings of individual slaves and that

“Failing to meet picking standards had severe consequences. In 1834 S. A. Townes of Marion, Alabama threatened to "make those bitches go at least 100 [pounds] or whip them like the devil.” In the 1830s Dr. J. W. Monett of Mississippi asserted that after weighing an individual's daily picking, masters would whip slaves for light or trashy picking. On several occasions, Louisiana planter Bennet Barrow ordered a whipping for all hands because the output was too low. As yet another example, John Edwin Fripp of South Carolina recorded "popping" and "switching" his slaves for light picking. On the Mississippi plantation of John Quitman and Henry Turner, a number of slaves ran away rather than face punishment for light or trashy picking.”

In other words, they argued, based on the evidence, that the slaveholders used the combination of detailed record keeping and whipping to maximize the productivity of slaves. In addition, they found that the average pounds of cotton picked by a slave increased over time. 

There are essentially two ways that this increase over time could have occurred. First, slaves could have been forced to pick closer to the maximum that they were physically capable of. Second, the maximum that they were physically capable of picking increased over time. O & R argue for the second explanation. Improved plants enabled slaves to pick more cotton in a given amount of time. In other words, slaveholders used physical coercion to force slaves to pick at maximum picking rates and through plant breeding they were able to increase this maximum amount that a person was physically capable of picking overtime.

Baptist’s alternative seems to be that the maximum remained relatively stable (he acknowledges that improved plants may have played some role), but planters became more effective at forcing people to produce up to the maximum. But this explanation poses several problems.

1.      

Why were early slaveholders so bad at pushing people to their capacity? Keep in mind that all the records on picking are from slaveholders who kept picking books, yet picking rates in the 1820s appear to have been well less than half of those in the ‘40s and ‘50s.  

2.      

Why didn’t these techniques carry over to other crops (sea island cotton and sugar)

The two problems are illustrated with the following figures from  O & R. 

Finally, Baptist now seems to make much of the claim that productivity fell after the war, suggesting that this somehow contradicts O & R's argument. He claimed that there was a consensus on the decline in productivity. I pointed out that there was not a consensus on the issue and that the data used to estimate productivity after the war are not strictly comparable to that from the antebellum picking books. Personally, I suspect there was probably a decline in productivity. But a decline in productivity is consistent with O & R’s argument. Why? Because they assumed that physical coercion was used to push slaves throughout the period. If you remove it productivity will fall. Pseudoerasmus notes in the comments section at the Junto that the sources Baptist cites are more consistent with O & R's argument than they are with his.

Some Big Question Economic History

Joel Mokyr on the Culture of Growth

Working paper by Koyama, Moriguchi and Sng on the development of state capacity in China and Japan.

And Mokyr on the Needham Paradox

More on Capitalism and Slavery

There is more discussion of capitalism and slavery over at the Junto, prompted by Robin Balckburn's review of Emprire of Cotton and John Clegg's essay in the most recent issue of Critical Historical Studies.  Clegg points out a number of problems with the arguments made by Baptist and Beckert, which I (here, here and here)  and Pseudoerasmus had noted. Clegg also argues that for the new history of capitalism to be fruitful it needs to grapple with the definition of capitalism.

Christine Exley the Economic Rockstar

The latest edition of Economic Rockstar Podcast features Christine Exley of the Harvard Business School. Among other things, she talks about how she came to study economics at the University of Mary Washington.