【量化历史网上讲座系列】(Quantitative History Webinar Series)由香港大学陈志武教授和马驰骋博士联合发起并举办，旨在介绍前沿量化历史研究成果、促进同仁交流，推广量化方法在历史研究中的应用。本系列讲座由国际量化历史学会、香港大学经济管理学院和亚洲环球研究所全力支持和承办。
第55场讲座信息
Structural Change, Elite Capitalism, and the Emergence of Labor Emancipation
主讲人:Quamrul H. Ashraf, Halvorsen Professor for Distinguished Teaching and Research of Economics, Williams College
时间：2022年03月24日 09:00 - 11:30 （北京时间，星期四）
讲座语言：英文
注册链接及二维码：
https://hku.zoom.us/webinar/register/7816477619027/WN_hef1OlUqQqe6dANk8glZqg
讲座介绍
Quamrul Ashraf, of Williams College, and his co-authors study a novel mechanism for the emergence of labor emancipation – one in which the material incentives of elites in society play an instrumental role. They propose that the decline of coercive labor institutions in the course of industrialization has partly been driven by complementarity between physical capital and free workers in the production process. In light of the costly enforcement of labor effort in non-manual industrial tasks, as well as the nascent significance of skills for the returns to physical capital, the capitalist elites relinquished their previously profitable coercion of labor out of self-interest. By reducing wage expropriation, they incentivized workers to increase effective labor and potentially also acquire skills, thus fostering the short- and long-run returns to physical capital for the elites.
In this Quantitative History Webinar, Quamrul Ashraf will explain the evidence they uncover in line with this hypothesis: based on plausibly exogenous variation in proto-industrialization across regions of nineteenth-century Prussia, the initial abundance of elite-owned physical capital contributed to (i) the subsequent intensity of serf emancipation, (ii) the elites’ willingness to accept emancipation at lower redemption payments, and (iii) the employment of skilled workers in manufacturing, amongst other outcomes related to general human capital.
Quamrul's co-authors: Francesco Cinnirella (University of Bergamo), Oded Galor (Brown University), Boris Gershman (American University), and Erik Hornung (University of Cologne)
