"Empire of Cotton" by @Sven_Beckert nimbly skewers the notion that the West grew rich because it had good institutions and nice technology. The Industrial Revolution was built on state violence, slavery, and colonization. Here is a good overview:https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/west-got-rich-modern-capitalism-born …
Amongst other crucial flaws in this thesis, the fact that slaves were unremunerated does *not* imply that their labor was actually cheap. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498317302292 …pic.twitter.com/jEOVCFUSxI
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Interesting, but isn’t unit labor cost more relevant to compare if you’re looking at coerced vs uncoerced production?
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I'm not sure how you're proposing to measure that here specifically, but how does that address the underlying question given other elements of TFP?
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