Comparing Systems of Forced Labor: Explanations for how the U.S. South’S Slave Economy Became Prosperous

Abstract

This paper showcases negative results of two common theories surrounding United States cotton literature. It has been proposed that the amount of land available to the U.S. South allowed for lucrative expansion that other nations physically could not obtain. Others have proposed that the United States created an effective labor system that created immense productivity and, as a result, prosperity. However, our findings suggest that the United States was not more productive than Egypt and that it did not benefit from a spatial fix. These negative findings contribute to an understanding of why the South prospered using a system of labor that has economically retarded other nations by eliminating theories commonly proposed by the literature.