The relative efficiency of slave agriculture: a reply

Abstract

Professors Hofler and Folland have written a very interesting paper, which brings out several interesting ideas and is a contribution to the literature. They argue that their results contradict those of our original paper concerning the relative efficiency of small versus large slave farms. Specifically they find that large slave farms are relatively more efficient. However, they have missed that main point of the original paper which was to compare the relative efficiency of slave and non-slave farms. On this issue, the Holfer and Folland comment provides no additional insight. Thus their paper, while interesting, is not a comment on our original work.