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...

Cash holdings at the onset of a financial crisis are a key determinant of investment by SMEs not only during the crisis but also during the recovery period. Cash-rich SMEs could maintain their capital stock during the global financial crisis, while cash-poor rivals reduced theirs. This gave...