This paper estimates the medium- to long-run effects of slavery in the United States in a spatial regression discontinuity design. Using the boundary between free and slave states immediately antebellum, we find that legal slavery decreased per capita manufacturing output by as much as 30% in the decades following the Civil War. Perhaps surprisingly, agricultural output and farm values were only briefly depressed in former slave states after the war. Although emancipation ended slavery, political forces kept the institution from being completely disintegrated, and we explore channels through which this was possible. We show that slavery affected the structure of the economy in a given region—specifically through agricultural production decisions—and that these structures persisted long after passage of the 13th Amendment. However, sharecropping played a relatively small role in this region. Our results support mounting evidence in recent literature of the significant and lasting effects of institutions on economic development.

中文翻译：

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考察美国采掘制度的持续影响

本文在空间回归不连续设计中估计了美国奴隶制的中长期影响。使用战前自由州和奴隶州之间的边界，我们发现合法奴隶制在内战后的几十年中使人均制造业产出减少了多达 30%。也许令人惊讶的是，战后前奴隶国家的农业产出和农场价值只是短暂下降。尽管解放结束了奴隶制，但政治力量阻止了该机构的彻底瓦解，我们探索了使之成为可能的渠道。我们表明，奴隶制影响了特定地区的经济结构——特别是通过农业生产决策——并且这些结构在第 13 修正案通过后很长时间仍然存在。然而，佃农在该地区的作用相对较小。我们的研究结果支持近期文献中越来越多的证据表明制度对经济发展具有重大而持久的影响。