World Demand for Cotton during the Nineteenth Century: Wright's Estimates Re-examined

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A low rate of growth of world demand for cotton figures prominently in recent attempts to understand the post-bellum retardation of the southern economy. Gavin Wright, especially, stresses this factor in several articles and a recent book.1 Using-sophisticated regression techniques to estimate the rate of growth of demand for American cotton during both the ante- and post-bellum eras and the magnitude of the change in the rate between them, Wright finds a decline of more than two thirds. Such an occurrence could hardly have helped the South make a prompt recovery from the Civil War.

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: