The occupations of slaves sold in New Orleans: Missing values, cheap talk, or informative advertising?

Autor: Jonathan B. Pritchett, Jessica Hayes
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: Cliometrica. 10:181-195
ISSN: 1863-2513
1863-2505
DOI: 10.1007/s11698-015-0129-y
Popis: We propose an alternative test for adverse selection using notarial records for slaves sold in New Orleans in 1830. The experiment is simple and mimics the used car example originally proposed by Akerlof (1970). When rst sold in New Orleans, buyers of imported slaves were uninformed of the slaves’ unobservable characteristics. In time, the new owners learned more about their slaves and the \lemons" were sold and the \peaches" retained. Because buyers anticipate that the slaves oered for sale were of lower quality on average, they reduce their bids for these slaves. Consequently, we should observe a lower price for the slaves who were resold in the market. We test this proposition by linking the sequential sales records of 833 slaves sold in New Orleans. Through a comparison of initial and resale prices, we nd that prices increased which suggests that adverse selection had a relatively small eect on the prices of slaves.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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