Jewish Occupational Selection: Education, Restrictions, or Minorities?

By M. Botticini, Zwi Eckstein. Journal Economic History, 2005

245 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Before the eighth–ninth centuries CE, most Jews, like the rest of the population, were farmers. With the establishment of the Muslim Empire, almost all Jews entered urban occupations despite no restrictions prohibiting them from remaining in agriculture. This occupational selection remained their distinctive mark thereafter. Our thesis is that this transition away from agriculture into crafts and trade was the outcome of their widespread literacy prompted by a religious and educational reform in Judaism in the first and second centuries CE, which gave them a comparative advantage in urban, skilled occupations. We present evidence that supports our argument.

Subfields: Accounting, Demography, Political Science and International Relations

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Citations in the corpus

The role of human capital and innovation in economic development: evidence from post-Malthusian Prussia (2017, unknown): “Botticini and Eckstein (2005, 2007) argue that religious norms induced Jewish communities to acquire higher levels of human capital.”
Culture and Economics (2016, background): “Another compelling example is provided by Botticini and Eckstein (2005) who present the thesis that an ‘exogenous’ cultural change gave rise to the pattern of Jewish occupational selection that we see to this day.”
The Enfranchisement of Women and the Welfare State (2007, unknown): “Contributions include Bisin and Verdier (2000), Guiso et al. (2003), Botticini and Eckstein (2005), and Algan and Cahuc (2006).”
Women, Work, and Culture (2007, unknown): “Case studies (e.g. Botticini and Eckstein (2005)) are one direction.”
Banks and Development: Jewish Communities in the Italian Renaissance and Current Economic Performance (2016, background): “See also Townsend (1979), Diamond (1996) and Boyd and Prescott (1985). (2)On a pure cross-country basis, the rst work that documents a positive correlation between nance and growth dates back to Goldsmith (1969). King and Levine (1993a) and King and Levine (1993b) extend this work adding more coun”
Religious institutions and entrepreneurship (2014, background): “The explanation for this high proportion of Jewish entrepreneurs is related to their investment in education (Botticini and Eckstein 2005, 2007; Chiswick 1983),2 the strong trust and nested network of the Jewish society (Godley 1996) and the high respect the Jewish religion has toward innovative…”
Occupational Choice and the Spirit of Capitalism (2008, background): “The model economy is populated by overlapping generations of altruistic people who live for four periods, two as children and two as adults.”
The Mission: Human Capital Transmission, Economic Persistence, and Culture in South America* (2018, background): “An outstanding empirical question is whether cultural traits are transmitted horizontally or vertically, as in the theoretical cultural models of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981), Boyd and Richerson (1985), and Bisin and Verdier (2000 and 2001).”