EH.Net Mailing List Archive: EH.Teach

Here is a request from the tch-econ list 
 
  
 
________________________________ 
 
From: James Barbour [mailto:barbour at elon.edu]  
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 3:46 PM 
To: tch-econ at elon.edu 
Subject: Older cliometrics paper 
 
  
 
I seem to recall some time back (30 years back ...) work done by a 
cliometrician looking at the sugar-rum-slaves triangle trade.  The topic 
is well dealt with, but I am looking for one of the original papers. 
The thrust of the research was to look at the origin and destination of 
harbor-master records and run a simple regression on the relationship. 
It turned out that the destination and the origin of most ships in port 
over a fairly long time were the same, indicating that the Ed Asner 
character in the mini-series Roots (now I'm really showing my age!), was 
a myth.  The ships were not going in triangles but simply plying the 
waters back and forth.  I want to use the article as an illustration of 
a clever use of regression to answer an inherently non-numerical 
question. 
 
Does anyone have the citation to this mystery article before I spend the 
next two days trying to find it? 
 
Thanks, 
 
~ jim 
 
Jim Barbour, Department of Economics 
 
Elon University, Elon NC 27244 
 
+1 336 278 5945 voice || +1 336 278 5952 fax