This paper presents an intertemporal model of pre-industrial economies defined with leisure preference to study the condition of the emergence and persistence of exploitation as unequal exchange of labor. We show that pure workers are exploited in any finite periods if there is positive real...

In subsistence economies with general convex technology and rational optimising agents, a new, axiomatic approach is developed, which allows an explicit analysis of the core positive and normative intuitions behind the concept of exploitation. Three main new axioms, called Labour Exploitation in...

This paper provides an innovative axiomatic analysis of the notion of exploitation as the unequal exchange of labour, focusing on the relation between exploitation and profits. General convex economies with heterogeneous agents endowed with unequal amounts of physical and human capital are...