Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T02:56:05.693Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Migration and Human Capital: Self-Selection of Indentured Servants to the Americas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2006

Ran Abramitzky  and
Fabio Braggion
Ran Abramitzky
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Stanford University, Landau Economics Building, 579 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-6072. E-mail: [email protected].
Fabio Braggion
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Finance, Tilburg University and CentER, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When contracting, European merchants could at least partially observe characteristics such as the health, physical strength, and education of indentured servants. These characteristics, unobservable to us, were likely to influence servitude duration, which is observable to us. We employ a switching regression model to analyze 2,066 servitude contracts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Servants were positively selected to American mainland colonies in terms of their unobservable human capital and negatively selected to the West Indies. Thus, the relative quality of migrants' human capital may have played a role in the subsequent relative economic performance of these regions.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , December 2006 , pp. 882 - 905
Copyright
© 2006 The Economic History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acemoglu Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. (2001): “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.” American Economics Review 91, no. 5 1369–401.Google Scholar
Acemoglu Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. (2002): “Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 4 1231–94.Google Scholar
Acemoglu Daron, Simon Johnson, James Robinson, and Yunyong Thaicharoen. (2003): “Institutional Causes, Macroeconomic Symptoms: Volatility, Crises and Growth.” Journal of Monetary Economics 50, no. 1 49–123.Google Scholar
Amemiya Takeshi. 1985. Advanced Econometrics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bailyn Bernard. 1986. Voyagers to the West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Becker Gary, Kevin Murphy, and Robert Tamura. (1990): “Human Capital, Fertility, and Economic Growth.” Journal of Political Economy 98, no. 5 S12–S37.Google Scholar
Borjas George J. (1987): “Self-Selection and the Earning of Immigrants.” American Economic Review 77, no. 4 531–53.Google Scholar
Borjas George J.. (1994): “The Economics of Immigration.” Journal of Economic Literature 32, no. 4 1667–717.Google Scholar
Bridenbaugh Carl, and Roberta Bridenbaugh. 1972. No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1634–1690. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campbell Mildred. 1959. “Social Origins of Some Early Americans.” In Seventeenth-Century America, edited by James Morton Smith, 63–89. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Chiswick Barry. (1986): “Is the New Immigration Less Skilled Than the Old?.” Journal of Labor Economics 4, no. 2 168–92.Google Scholar
Chiswick Barry. (1999): “Are Immigrants Favorably Self-Selected?.” The American Economic Review 89, no. 2 181–85.Google Scholar
Coldham Peter Wilson. 1988. The Bristol Registers of Servants Sent to Foreign Plantations, 1654–1686. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing.
Diamond Jared. 1997. “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.” New York: W. W. Norton.
Dunn Richard. 1972. “Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713.” Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Engerman Stanley L., and Kenneth. L. Sokoloff. 1997. “Factor Endowment, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New World Economies.” In How Latin America Fell Behind, edited by Steven Haber, 260–304. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Engerman Stanley L., and Kenneth. L. Sokoloff. (2000): “Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 3 217–32.Google Scholar
Engerman Stanley L., and Kenneth. L. Sokoloff. 2005. “Colonialism, Inequality, and Long-Run Paths of Development.” NBER Working Paper No. 11057
Engerman Stanley L., and Robert E. Gallman. 1996. The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ferrie Joseph P. 1999. “How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm [When They've Seen Schenectady]? Rural to Urban Migration in the US, 1850–70.” Prepared for the Cliometrics Conference
Ferrie Joseph P.. 1999. Yankeys Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum United States, 1840–1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
French Elizabeth. 1962. List of emigrants to America from Liverpool, 1697–1707. Baltimore: Genealogical Publication.
Galenson David W. (1977): “Agreements to Serve in America and the West Indies, 1727–1731.” Genealogists' Magazine 19 40–44.Google Scholar
Galenson David W.. (1981): “White Servitude and the Growth of Black Slavery in the Colonial America.” This Journal 41, no. 1 39–47.Google Scholar
Galenson David W.. (1981): “The Market Evaluation of Human Capital: The Case of Indentured Servitude.” Journal of Political Economy 89, no. 3 446–67.Google Scholar
Galenson David W.. 1981. White Servitude in Colonial America. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Galenson David W.. 1996. “The Settlement and Growth of the Colonies: Population, Labor and Economic Development.” In Cambridge Economic History of the United States Vol. 1, edited by Stanley Engerman and Robert E. Gallman, 135–207. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Galor Oded, and David Weil. “Population, Technology, and Growth: From Malthusian Stagnation to the Demographic Transition and Beyond.” American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (2000): 806–28.Google Scholar
Gallup John Luke, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and Andrew D. Mellinger. 1998. “Geography and Economic Development.” NBER Working Paper No. 6849
Ghirelli Michael. 1968. A List of Emigrants from England to America, 1682–1692. Baltimore: Magna Charta.
Glaeser Edward L., Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer. 2004. “Do Institutions Cause Growth?: NBER Working Paper 10568
Goddeeris John H. (1988): “Compensating Differentials and Self-Selection: An Application to Lawyers.” Journal of Political Economy 96, no. 2 411–28.Google Scholar
Green W. A. (1973): “The Planter and British West Indian Sugar Production, Before and After Emancipation.” Economic History Review 26, no. 3 448–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grubb Farley. (1985): “The Market for Indentured Immigrants: Evidence on the Efficiency of Forward Labor Contracting in Philadelphia, 1745–1773.” This Journal 45, no. 4. 855–68.Google Scholar
Grubb Farley. (1985): “The Incidence of Servitude in Trans-Atlantic Migration, 1771–1804.” Explorations in Economic History 22, no. 3 316–39.Google Scholar
Grubb Farley. (1988): “The Auction of Redemptioner Servants, Philadelphia, 1771–1804: An Economic Analysis.” This Journal 48, no. 3 583–603.Google Scholar
Grubb Farley. (1992): “Fatherless and Friendless: Factors Influencing the Flow of English Emigrant Servants.” This Journal 52, no. 1 85–108.Google Scholar
Grubb Farley. (1992): “The Long-Run Trend in the Value of European Immigrant Servants, 1654–1831: New Measurements and Interpretations.” Research in Economic History 14 167–240.Google Scholar
Grubb Farley. (1994): “The End of the European Immigrant Servitude in the United States: An Economic Analysis of a Market Collapse.” This Journal 54, no. 4 794–824.Google Scholar
Grubb Farley. (2001): “The Market Evaluation of Criminality: Evidence from the Auction of British Convict Labor in America, 1767–1775.” American Economic Review 91, no. 1 295–304.Google Scholar
Grubb Farley, and Tony Stitt. (1994): “The Liverpool Emigrant Servant Trade and the Transition to Slave Labor in the Chesapeake, 1697–1707: Market Adjustments to War.” Explorations in Economic History 31 no. 3 376–405.Google Scholar
Hall Robert E., and Charles I. Jones. (1999): “Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others?.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114, no. 1 83–116.Google Scholar
Heckman James. (1990): “Varieties of Selection Bias.” American Economic Review 80, no. 2 313–18.Google Scholar
Heckman James J., and Guilherme Sedlacek. (1985): “Heterogeneity, Aggregation and Market Wage Functions: An Empirical Model of Self-Selection in the Labor Market.” Journal of Political Economy 93, no. 6. 1077–125.Google Scholar
Horn James. 1991. “‘To Parts Beyond the Seas’: Free Emigration to the Chesapeake in the 17th Century” in “To Make America”: European Emigration in the Early Modern Period, edited by Ida Altman and James Horn, 85–130. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Horn James. 1994. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Hughes Jonathan, and Louis P. Cain. 1998. American Economic History Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Jones Alice Hanson. 1980. Wealth of a Nation To Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kaminkow Jack, and Marion Kaminkow. 1964. A List of Emigrants from England to America, 1718–1759. Baltimore: Magna Charta.
Lauson John. 1969 The Felon's Account of his Transportation at Virginia in America. Reprinted and edited by J. Steven Cox. St. Peter Port, Guernsey, UK: Mount Durand.
Lee Lung-Fei. (1978): “Unionism and Wage Rates: A Simultaneous Equation Model with Qualitative and Limited Dependent Variables.” International Economic Review 19, no. 2 415–33.Google Scholar
Lucas Robert E. Jr. (1988):“On the Mechanism of Economic Development.” Journal of Monetary Economics 21, no. 1 3–42.Google Scholar
Maddala G. S. 1983. Limited Dependent and Qualitative Variables in Econometrics. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Mankiw N. Gregory, David Romer, and David Weil. (1992): “A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 2 407–37.Google Scholar
Manski Charles F. (1990):“Nonparametric Bounds on Treatment Effects.” American Economic Review 80, no. 2. Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and Second Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association 319–23.Google Scholar
Newey Whitney K., James L. Powell, and James R. Walker. (1990): “Semiparametric Estimation of Selection Models: Some Empirical Results.” American Economic Review 80, no. 2. 324–28.Google Scholar
Nicholson Cregoe D P. 1965. Some Early Emigrants to America. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing.
North Douglass C. 1980. Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: W. W. Norton.
North Douglass C., William Summerhill, and Barry R. Weingast. “2000. Order, Disorder and Economic Change: Latin America vs. North America.” In Governing for Prosperity, edited by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Hilton Root, 17–58. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Olmstead Alan, and Paul Rhode. “2005. Wait a Cotton Pickin' Minute!: A New View of Slave Productivity.” Manuscript. University of California at Davis and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Pitman Frank Wesley. 1917. Development of the British West Indies 1700-1763. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Ragatz Lowell J. 1928. The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763–1833. New York: Century.
Rodrick Dani, Arvind Subramaniam, and Francesco Trebbi. “2002. Institution Rule: The Primacy of Institutions over Geography and Integration in Economic Development.” Manuscript. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
Robinson Chris, and Nigel Tomes. (1982): “Self-Selection and Interprovincial Migration in Canada.” The Canadian Journal of Economics 15, no. 3 474–502.Google Scholar
Sachs Jeffrey D. 2001. “Tropical Underdevelopment.” NBER Working Paper No. 8819
Schultz Theodore W. (1975):“The Value of the Ability to Deal with Disequilibria.” Journal of Economic Literature 13, no. 3 827–46.Google Scholar
Shastry Gauri K., and David Weil. (2003): “How Much of Cross-Country Income Variation is Explained by Health?.” Journal of European Economic Association 1, nos. 2–3 387–96.Google Scholar
Sheridan Richard B. 1974. Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies 1623–1775. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Smith Abott. 1947. Colonists in Bondage. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Steckel Richard H. (1995):“Stature and the Standard of Living.” Journal of Economic Literature 36, no. 2 766–817.Google Scholar
Wareing John. (1976): “Some Early Emigrants to America, 1683–84: A Supplementary List.” Genealogists' Magazine 18 239–46.Google Scholar
Ward J. R. (1978):“The Profitability of Sugar Planting in the British West Indies, 1650–1834.” Economic History Review 31, no. 2. 197–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weil David. “2005. Accounting for the Effect of Health on Economic Growth.” NBER Working Paper No. 11455
Willis Robert, and Sherwin Rosen. (1979): “Education and Self-Selection.” Journal of Political Economy 87, no. 5 S7–S36.Google Scholar