Jim Crow: Anti-Vagrancy and Anti-Enticement
Evans 597 now looks like a very nice room to have a seminar in::
Abstract: Across the New World, the abolition of slavery was followed by a battery of laws restricting the labor market mobility of the newly emancipated. This paper models and estimates the impact of labor mobility restricting laws on African-Americans in the post-bellum U.S. South. Laws restricting job-to-job transitions increased the fraction of African-Americans relative to whites living in the rural sector and working in agriculture across the South. Increases in the fines charged employers for recruiting employed workers increased the duration of black labor contracts in a sample of Arkansas agricultural workers. Black agricultural workers who lived longer under labor control laws had a lower return to experience. These findings are consistent with a two-sector model of on-the-job search with mobility costs.
