Ties That Bind: The Political Economy of Coerced Labor

This paper develops a game theoretic model to investigate the dynamics of coerced labor, with particular applications to serfdom in Late Medieval Europe and slavery in the antebellum United States. In regards to the former, two of the more prominent explanations for the abrogation of this institution in Western Europe are critically examined. The model predicts that reductions in population are generally associated with less coercion, in accordance with the population-based Malthusian theory. More profitable outside opportunities for laborers and price inflation, in some cases, decreases coercion as well, which is interpreted as evidence in favor of the market-based commercialization theory. The theory also provides explanations for why these same factors did not bring about the demise of serfdom in Eastern Europe, a puzzle posed in the famous Brenner debate. Because greater coercion increases output per laborer, the model also accords with the Fogel and Engerman (1974) finding that slave labor was productive in the antebellum United States.