- How does this figure differ for forced and free labor?
- Predictions: slaves will be more productive/time and consumer more calories
The relevance of policing costs
- Asymmetric information and shirking
- The scope for remunertation
- Why in kind transfers? Slaves do not aim to maximize their owner's wealth, but their own utility: Consume more calories or smoke cigars?
- Why manumission? Back-loaded incentives and self-monitoring.
- Making sense of the relative prevalence of manumission across time and place: Self-harm and the value of slaves
- What about child-labor? Human capital, present value, and selling your child out as a slave
- Slaves as valuable assets: The puzzle of death by exhaustion. Further implication: Higher demand for slave uniformity
- Necessary condition for slavery: The present value of a free man must be lower than that of a slave (ceteris paribus). When is this going to be more likely?
Other issues (Tullock et al.)
- Was slavery efficient?
- Defining efficiency? Pareto vs. Kaldor-Hicks
- Slavery as rent-seeking. Under competitive conditions, returns to slavery must be normal (or at least, approach normal returns). Thus, no extra-economic profits for the owners, but large costs for slaves. Furthermore, the cost of enforcing slavery: relative high?
- How should we get rid of slavery? Incentives are tricky. Should we buy slaves from owners?
- Why did some societies treat slaves better than others? Availability and cost of acquiring slaves. Sparta vs Athens.
Slave trade and mistrust
Trust and economic performance