TY  - JOUR
AU  - Calomiris,Charles
AU  - Pritchett,Jonathan
TI  - Preserving Slave Families for Profit: Traders' Incentives and Pricing in the New Orleans Slave Market
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14281
PY  - 2008
Y2  - August 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14281
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14281.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Charles W. Calomiris
Graduate School of Business
Columbia University
3022 Broadway Street, Uris Hall
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212/854-8748
Fax: 212/316-9219
E-Mail: cc374@columbia.edu

Jonathan Pritchett
Department of Economics
206 Tilton Hall
Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana 701 18-5698
E-Mail: jprit@tulane.edu
AB  - We investigate the determinants of slave family discounts, using data from the New Orleans slave market.  We find large price discounts for families which cannot be explained by scale effects, childcare costs, legal restrictions, or transport costs.  Because family members cared for each other, sellers found it advantageous to keep some families together.  Evidence from the manifests of ships carrying slaves to be sold in New Orleans provides direct evidence for our model of selectivity bias in explaining slave family discounts. Children likely to have been shipped with their mothers are 1-2 inches shorter than other children.
ER  -