This online appendix supplies the technical and archival supplements to the paper “Elite Identity and Political Accountability: A Tale of Ten Islands.” It contains (1) a formal economic model of planters and merchants that derives equilibrium rents and establishes the condition under which planters gain more from extractive policies than merchants; (2) Proposition A1 with a detailed proof showing that increasing the share of elite planters (type H) and decreasing merchant elites (type ℓ) lowers the probability that extractive policy is enacted; (3) a comprehensive description of how legislators across ten Caribbean islands are classified into four elite groups (white planters, white merchants, non‑white planters, non‑white merchants) using pre‑ and post‑Emancipation plantation ownership records, slave registries, compensation tables, and island‑specific historical sources; (4) extensive tables listing the primary archival sources for plantation surveys, the parishes (electoral districts) of each island, and regression re‑estimations of the main voting‑overlap results with district fixed effects; (5) a geographic note on Barbados highlighting its unique limestone terrain, near‑total sugar‑suitable land, and the resulting post‑Emancipation labor market constraints; and (6) a full bibliography of the historical and economic sources referenced. The appendix is analytical, providing proofs, derivations, coding decisions, and robustness evidence that underpin the paper’s empirical claims.
Topics
Deriving Planter and Merchant Economic Rents and the Extractive‑Policy Condition
Mathematical model of a Caribbean‑style economy with planters and merchants, solving for equilibrium wages, profits, and the inequality (28) that ensures planters benefit more from extractive policies than merchants.
Proposition A1: Elite Composition Shifts Reduce Extractive‑Policy Adoption
Formal statement and step‑by‑step proof that converting elite members from low‑type (L) to high‑type (H) and from merchant (ℓ) to planter (h) lowers the probability that an extractive policy is passed, using probability calculations over subsets of elites.
Coding Legislator Elite Types Across Ten Islands – Sources and Decision Rules
Methodological appendix detailing the secondary historical sources (slave registries, compensation tables, plantation surveys, island histories) and the coding algorithm that assigns each legislator to one of four elite categories based on pre‑ and post‑Emancipation ownership and racial identity.
Archival Data Tables: Plantation Surveys, Parish Listings, and Regression Robustness
Comprehensive tables listing the archival plantation‑survey sources for each island, the full set of parishes (electoral districts), and re‑estimated regression results (Table 2) with district fixed effects for Jamaica, Barbados, and Grenada.
Barbados’s Unique Geography and Its Post‑Emancipation Economic Implications
Geographic note explaining Barbados’s limestone soil, high elevation, near‑total sugar‑suitable land, and how these features produced extremely low post‑Emancipation wages and limited merchant class development.