Household sorting in an ancient setting

Abhimanyu Gupta and Jonathan Halket

Journal of Urban Economics, 2023, vol. 135, issue C

Abstract: We use archaeological data from ancient settlements of three different historical eras on a Greek island to construct novel measures of consumption. Using these, we show that the shares of high-quality consumption goods were relatively more concentrated closer to the center of nucleated settlements as compared to low-quality consumption goods. There is no such pattern in a placebo settlement. In this unique setting, these quality gradients may reflect differences in household consumption baskets across these settlements. We argue that some alternative, trade or production based hypotheses for such gradients can be weakly ruled out based on our data and archaeological sources.

Keywords: Spatial sorting; Luxury goods; Archaeology; Urban (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N93 R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juecon:v:135:y:2023:i:c:s0094119023000177

DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2023.103548

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