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In the shadow of the Gulag : worker discipline under Stalin
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Miller, Marcus and Smith, Jennifer C. (2015) In the shadow of the Gulag : worker discipline under Stalin. Journal of Comparative Economics, 43 (3). pp. 531-548. doi:10.1016/j.jce.2015.01.005 ISSN 0147-5967.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2015.01.005
Abstract
Highlights:
• The Gulag had incentive effects on Soviet labour akin to unemployment in the West.
• Stalin’s use of imprisonment for shirking-type behaviour and terror is documented.
• An efficiency wage model shows how the threat of prison raises investible surplus.
• It helps explain use of monitors, promises of a better future and harsh punishment.
• But random incarceration, used for political purposes, raises the efficiency wage.
An ‘efficiency wage’ model developed for Western economies is reinterpreted in the context of Stalin’s Russia, with imprisonment – not unemployment – acting as a ‘worker discipline device’. The threat of imprisonment allows the state to pay a lower wage outside the Gulag than otherwise, thereby raising the “surplus” left over for investment: this externality provides a reason for coercion over and above the direct productivity of those in custody.
Just how credible the threat of imprisonment was under Stalin is documented using archival data now available; but the enormous scale of random imprisonment involved is, we argue, attributable not to economic factors but to Stalin’s insecurity in the absence of a legitimate process for succession.
We develop a model of demand and supply for industrial labour in such a command economy. To get more resources for investment or war, the state depresses the level of real wages; to avoid incentive problems in the wider economy, the harshness of prison conditions can be intensified. This is the logic of coercion we analyse.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DK Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Comparative Economics | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Elsevier | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0147-5967 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | August 2015 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 43 | ||||||||
| Number: | 3 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 531-548 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jce.2015.01.005 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 28 July 2016 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 31 January 2017 | ||||||||
| Funder: | Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC) |
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