The interface of race and accounting: a comment and an extension

Abstract

This paper contests a key plank of Fleischman and Tyson's (2000) analysis of racism in Hawaiian sugar plantations, arguing that their assumption that the lack of individual productivity records in plantation archives denotes racism is misconceived and that the absence of these data has a transaction-cost explanation. The opportunity is taken to extend the analysis to the sugar industries of Florida and Queensland, finding racism in both, but only implicating accounting in the former.