It's an amazing paper but their interpretation of the results that "it's all social connections" is completely unsupported by their evidence and more consistent with standard human-capital / genetic inheritance.

Could you elaborate?

>who presumably lost a large chunk of their "wealth" after the civil war

I mean, having to hire labour rather than owning slaves changes the cost structure of their businesses, but it doesn't mean their plantations suddenly stopped growing things.

If anything, this points towards the idea that slavery was economically inefficient.

For a more recent example, see nail parlors in the US. They were started by officers from the Vietnamese army who had come as refugees to the country.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32544343

That's interesting but I guess expected since a major component of success is access to power and capital. I remember reading something a while back that a significant portion of the post-war japanese and german economy, industry and government were controlled by the descendents of vanquished elites.

I wonder how the children of our politicians and business elites do compared to ordinary folks? In the US, we have been brainwashed with the propaganda about meritocracy that we blindly believe as an absolute truth as children. It's only when we get older we realize that success has a lot more to do with connections than hard work.