Penology in the Jim Crow South centered on the chain gang. Gangs ostensibly served three purposes: their severity served as a deterrent; their putting convicts to work on roads and other public improvements reduced the taxpayers' costs of infrastructure; and their discriminatory implementation...

For the first time, this book provides the global history of labor in Central Eurasia, Russia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean between the 16th and 20th centuries. It contests common views on free and unfree labor, comparing the latter to many Western countries where wage conditions resembled those...

"This is a rigorous academic inquiry into how labor power has been dehumanized and commodified around the world through the ages for creation of wealth, capital accumulation, and industrialization. Major forms of unfree and involuntary labor markets around the world-from slavery to serfdom, from...

This paper advances a novel hypothesis regarding the historical roots of labor emancipation. It argues that the decline of coercive labor institutions in the industrial phase of development has been an inevitable by-product of the intensification of capital-skill complementarity in the...

This paper advances a novel hypothesis regarding the historical roots of labor emancipation. It argues that the decline of coercive labor institutions in the industrial phase of development has been an inevitable by-product of the intensification of capital-skill complementarity in the...

Do factor endowments explain serfdom? Domar (1970) conjectured that high land-labor ratios caused serfdom by increasing incentives to coerce labor. But historical evidence is mixed and quantitative analyses are lacking. Using the Acemoglu-Wolitzky (2011) framework and controlling for political...

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of illustrations -- Technical notes -- Acknowledgements -- Foreword -- Introduction -- The Tokugawa colonization of Ezo -- The Meiji colonization of Hokkaido -- The history of forced labour and prisons in Japan -- Book...

This report was prepared on the basis of the replies received from governments and organizations of employers and workers to the questionnaire and contains the substance of their observations, as well as those from other international organizations, together with the Office's commentary on the...

The Forum's new publication Hedging Risk by Combating Human Trafficking: Insights from the Private Sector is designed to help companies share best practices so they can mitigate their risks and help eliminate this heinous practice. In this first of a series, we highlight insights and...