This study investigates the long-term relationship between slavery and violent crime in the USA. Although qualitative evidence suggests that slavery perpetuated violence, there has been no large-N study supporting this claim. Using county-level data, we find that the percentage of slaves in the...

What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have identified a connection between structural transformation and social change. To understand how changes in a society's dominant mode of production affect its dominant values, we examine the case of the...

This paper examines wine output and slave labor productivity in the Dutch and British Cape Colony, leveraging annual tax censuses. We document a substantial increase in wine production, but, despite substantial institutional changes over more than a century, we find surprisingly stable median...

Limitations on or total prohibition of usury (or interest) have been a pervasive theme across religions and ancient societies. Since medieval times, two major institutional changes relating to non-performance of debt contracts have taken place, namely, the abolition of slavery and the evolution...

This paper analyzes the characteristics of the free population who were recorded as "owners" of enslaved people in the antebellum Southern states. We utilize the first nationally representative sample linking enslaved and free people - the 1/100 sample microdata files of the 1850 Census of...

This paper analyzes the characteristics of the free population who were recorded as "owners" of enslaved people in the antebellum Southern states. We utilize the first nationally representative sample linking enslaved and free people - the 1/100 sample microdata files of the 1850 Census of...

Nunn & Wantchekon (2011) detect a long-lasting impact of the slave trade on current trust levels across ethnic groups in Africa. They use data from Afrobarometer's wave 3 to construct trust measures. While I can perfectly replicate the original OLS and 2SLS findings in this wave starting from...

This paper investigates the historical origins of female genital cutting (FGC). We test the historical hypothesis that FGC is associated with the Red Sea route of the African slave trade, where women were typically sold as concubines in the Middle East and infibulation was used as a means to...

The illegal cultivation of cannabis in the UK is a serious problem that can involve the exploitation of vulnerable migrant populations who are trafficked to work as cannabis growers under conditions of debt bondage and modern slavery. Although there is much public interest in modern slavery and...

This study investigates the long-term relationship between slavery and violent crime in the USA. Although qualitative evidence suggests that slavery perpetuated violence, there has been no large-N study supporting this claim. Using county-level data, we find that the percentage of slaves in the...

Many recent discourses on modern slavery have dedicated attention to gendered dimension of trafficking, labour exploitation and sex work, among others. However, many debates pay little attention to the structural inequalities and limited social protection structures. Using mainly primary data...