supply of labor encourages technological progress. In contrast, the famous Habakkuk hypothesis in economic history claims …This paper studies the conditions under which the scarcity of a factor (in particular, labor) encourages technological … that technological progress was more rapid in 19th-century United States than in Britain because of labor scarcity in the …

Slavery has been a major institution of labor coercion throughout history. Colonial societies used slavery intensively … major source of demand for slave labor during colonial times, and all colonial gold mines are now depleted. We find that the …