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Full-Text Articles in Law and Economics

Racism Pays: How Racial Exploitation Gets Innovation Off The Ground, Daria Roithmayr Apr 2023

Racism Pays: How Racial Exploitation Gets Innovation Off The Ground, Daria Roithmayr

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Recent work on the history of capitalism documents the key role that racial exploitation played in the launch of the global cotton economy and the construction of the transcontinental railroad. But racial exploitation is not a thing of the past. Drawing on three case studies, this Paper argues that some of our most celebrated innovations in the digital economy have gotten off the ground by racially exploiting workers of color, paying them less than the marginal revenue product of their labor for their essential contributions. Innovators like Apple and Uber have been able to racially exploit workers of color because …


Shedding New Light On Multinational Corporations And Human Rights: Promises And Limits Of “Blockchainizing” The Global Supply Chain, Chang-Hsien Tsai, Ching-Fu Lin Feb 2023

Shedding New Light On Multinational Corporations And Human Rights: Promises And Limits Of “Blockchainizing” The Global Supply Chain, Chang-Hsien Tsai, Ching-Fu Lin

Michigan Journal of International Law

Over the last few decades, advances in transportation and production technology, in conjunction with economic globalization and the emergence of multinational corporations, have consolidated fragmented production processes into long and complex supply chains across jurisdictions. While there are benefits to such global supply chains (“GSCs”), the prevalence of human rights violations attributable to information asymmetry, as well as rule of law gaps between different jurisdictions, has been a constant challenge. Modern slavery, child abuse, harsh working conditions, low wages, and other problems have reoccurred in the factories of upstream suppliers in the global South and have been systemically ignored by …