The economic literature on reparations effectiveness is smaller than the moral and historical literature but increasingly important. Key works include Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid, which argues that large-scale financial transfers to African governments have on balance been harmful to development. William Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden provides a broader critique of top-down development interventions. The contrast with Jeffery Sachs’s more positive view in The End of Poverty is instructive.
On the specific economic history, Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery should be read alongside the scholarly responses: Barbara Solow and Stanley Engerman’s British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery, and Patrick O’Brien’s quantitative work on the economic significance of the slave trade to British industrialisation. The Slave Voyages database at slavevoyages.org provides the underlying data for anyone wanting to examine the numbers directly.
