Coercive Contract Enforcement: Law and the Labor Market in Nineteenth Century Industrial Britain
研究了1875年前英国主仆法将员工违约定为刑事犯罪的影响，发现正向需求冲击增加起诉，废除刑事制裁后工资上升且对需求冲击反应更敏感，强制合同执行使工人接受低但稳定的工资。
British Master and Servant law made employee contract breach a criminal offense until 1875. We develop a contracting model generating equilibrium contract breach and prosecutions, then exploit exogenous changes in output prices to examine the effects of labor demand shocks on prosecutions. Positive shocks in the textile, iron, and coal industries increased prosecutions. Following the abolition of criminal sanctions, wages differentially rose in counties that had experienced more prosecutions, and wages responded more to labor demand shocks. Coercive contract enforcement was applied in industrial Britain; restricted mobility allowed workers to commit to risk-sharing contracts with lower, but less volatile, wages.