Sharing culture and resource conservation in hunter-gatherer societies

Rabindra Nath Chakraborty

Oxford Economic Papers, 2007, vol. 59, issue 1, 63-88

Abstract: Harvest sharing in hunter-gatherer societies takes the form of implicit taxes on renewable resources the proceeds of which are redistributed among all members of the community. It is argued that these taxes represent an evolutionary response to the dynamics of large game hunting. The implicit resource tax raises output and welfare per capita; high tax rates can prevent the emergence of a 'feast and famine' pattern of growth. These predictions are found to be consistent with evidence from the !Kung San hunter-gatherer society in southern Africa. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpl025 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:oxecpp:v:59:y:2007:i:1:p:63-88

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().