Population Diversity, Division of Labor and the Emergence of Trade and State

Emilio Depetris-Chauvin and Ömer Özak

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This research explores the emergence and prevalence of economic specialization and trade in pre-modern societies. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically that population diversity had a positive causal effect on economic specialization and trade. Based on a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic and genetic data, this research exploits the exogenous variation in population diversity generated by the ``Out-of-Africa'' migration of anatomically modern humans to causally establish the positive effect of population diversity on economic specialization and the emergence of trade-related institutions, which, in turn, facilitated the historical formation of states. Additionally, it provides suggestive evidence that regions historically inhabited by pre-modern societies with high levels of economic specialization have a larger occupational heterogeneity and are more developed today.

Keywords: Economic Specialization; Division of Labor; Trade; State Formation; Population Diversity; Economic Development; Population Heterogeneity; Genetic Diversity; Diversity; Emergence of State; Persistence; Out of Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F1 N0 N4 O1 O4 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gro and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/69565/1/MPRA_paper_69565.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Population Diversity, Division of Labor and the Emergence of Trade and State (2015)
Working Paper: Population Diversity, Division of Labor and the Emergence of Trade and State (2015)
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:pra:mprapa:69565

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().