Arbeitspapier

Capital-Skill Complementarity and the Emergence of Labor Emancipation

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 production process. In light of the growing significance of skilled labor for fostering the return to physical capital, elites in society were induced to relinquish their historically profitable coercion of labor in favor of employing free skilled workers, thereby incentivizing the masses to engage in broad-based human capital acquisition, without fear of losing their skill premium to expropriation. In line with the proposed hypothesis, exploiting a plausibly exogenous source of variation in early industrialization across regions of nineteenth-century Prussia, capital abundance is shown to have contributed to the subsequent intensity of de facto serf emancipation.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 6423

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
Coercive Labor Markets
Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations: Europe: Pre-1913
Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913
Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
Institutions and Growth
Thema
labor coercion
serfdom
emancipation
industrialization
physical capital accumulation
capital-skill complementarity
demand for human capital
nineteenth-century Prussia

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Ashraf, Quamrul H.
Cinnirella, Francesco
Galor, Oded
Gershman, Boris
Hornung, Erik
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
(wo)
Munich
(wann)
2017

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:45 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Ashraf, Quamrul H.
  • Cinnirella, Francesco
  • Galor, Oded
  • Gershman, Boris
  • Hornung, Erik
  • Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)

Entstanden

  • 2017

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