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Enforcement In Apprenticeship Contracts: Were Runaways a Serious Problem? Evidence from Montreal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Gillian Hamilton
Gillian Hamilton
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Toronto, Department of Economics, 150 St. George St., Toronto M5S IAI, Canada.
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Extract

Historians argue that in late eighteenth-century North Aerica, apprentices often ran away form their masters. Masters’ inability to write enforceable contracts, the argument goes, sparked the decline of traditional apprenticeships. This article addresses the issue of enforcement. I analyze an apprentice’s incentive to run away and the role of enforcement with detailed archival evidence form Montreal. These data cast doubt on the claim that masters were unable to construct enforceable contracts and call into question the severity of a runaway problem.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 551 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1995

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