Jewish Occupational Selection: Education, Restrictions or Minorities?

Zvi Eckstein () and Maristella Botticini

No 4604, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This Paper documents the major features of Jewish economic history in the first millennium to explain the distinctive occupational selection of the Jewish people into urban, skilled occupations. We show that many Jews entered urban occupations in the eighth-ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire when there were no restrictions on their economic activities, most of them were farmers, and they were a minority in all locations. Therefore, arguments based on restrictions or minority status cannot explain the occupational transition of the Jews at that time. Our thesis is that the occupational selection of the Jews was the outcome of the widespread literacy prompted by a religious and educational reform in the first century CE, which was implemented in the third to the eighth century. We present detailed information on the implementation of this religious and educational reform in Judaism based on the Talmud, archeological evidence on synagogues, the Cairo Geniza documents, and the Responsa literature. We also provide evidence of the economic returns to Jewish religious literacy.

Keywords: First millennium; Human capital; Jewish economic history; Migration; Occupational choice; Religion and social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J10 J20 N30 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4604 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Jewish Occupational Selection: Education, Restrictions, or Minorities? (2005)
Working Paper: Jewish Occupational Selection: Education, Restrictions, or Minorities? (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4604

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4604

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().