Working Paper: NBER ID: w27161
Authors: James J. Feigenbaum; Soumyajit Mazumder; Cory B. Smith
Abstract: How do coercive societies respond to negative economic shocks? We explore this question in the early 20th-Century United States South. Since before the nation's founding, cotton cultivation formed the politics and institutions in the South, including the development of slavery, the lack of democratic institutions, and intergroup relations between whites and blacks. We leverage the natural experiment generated by the boll weevil infestation from 1892-1922, which disrupted cotton production in the region. Panel difference-in-differences results provide evidence that Southern society became less violent and repressive in response to this shock with fewer lynchings and less Confederate monument construction. Cross-sectional results leveraging spatial variation in the infestation and historical cotton specialization show that affected counties had less KKK activity, higher non-white voter registration, and were less likely to experience contentious politics in the form of protests during the 1960s. To assess mechanisms, we show that the reductions in coercion were responses to African American out-migration. Even in a context of antidemocratic institutions, ordinary people can retain political power through the ability to ``vote with their feet.''
Keywords: coercive economies; boll weevil; political economy; U.S. South; racial violence
JEL Codes: J15; N3
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| boll weevil infestation (N52) | reduction in racial violence and coercion against African Americans (K16) |
| boll weevil infestation (N52) | fewer lynchings (J79) |
| boll weevil infestation (N52) | less construction of Confederate monuments (N62) |
| boll weevil infestation (N52) | higher rates of nonwhite voter registration (K16) |
| boll weevil infestation (N52) | less KKK activity (J79) |
| boll weevil infestation (N52) | diminished economic rationale for coercion (D70) |
| diminished economic rationale for coercion (D70) | reduced repression (Y50) |