Slavery versus Labor

Author:

Dari-Mattiacci Giuseppe1,de Oliveira Guilherme1

Affiliation:

1. University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands

Abstract

Abstract Slavery has been a long-lasting and often endemic problem across time and space, and has commonly coexisted with a free-labor market. To understand (and possibly eradicate) slavery, one needs to unpack its relationship with free labor. Under what conditions would a principal choose to buy a slave rather than to hire a free worker? First, slaves cannot leave at will, which reduces turnover costs; second, slaves can be subjected to physical punishments, which reduces enforcement costs. In complex tasks, relation-specific investments are responsible for high turnover costs, which makes principals prefer slaves over workers. At the other end of the spectrum, in simple tasks, the threat of physical punishment is a relatively cheap way to produce incentives as compared to rewards, because effort is easy to monitor, which again makes slaves the cheaper alternative. The resulting equilibrium price in the market for slaves affects demand in the labor market and induces principals to hire workers for tasks of intermediate complexity. The available historical evidence is consistent with this pattern. Our analysis sheds light on cross-society differences in the use of slaves, on diachronic trends, and on the effects of current anti-slavery policies.

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Subject

Law,General Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Reference79 articles.

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4. Baptist, E.E. (2014). The half has never been told: slavery and the making of American capitalism. New York, Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

5. Barcia, M. and Childs, M.D. (2010). Cuba. In: Paquette, R.L. and Smith, M.M. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of slavery in the Americas. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 90–110.

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