The Economics of Religion, Jewish Survival and Jewish Attitudes Toward Competition in Torah Education

Dennis Carlton and Avi Weiss

No 7863, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines the attitude of Jewish law to competition in light of the economist's understanding of the benefits of competition and of the beneficiaries from intervention in the competitive process. The punchline of this paper is simple. Although Judaism has used a whole host of restrictions on competition and has had its share of legislation to promote private interests, there has been one area that has generally been a consistent exception to impediments to competition -- the teaching of Torah. This exception is all the more remarkable because those who were in a position to influence the legislation often stood to benefit from such restrictions. From this stress on teaching, we show that the foundation was laid for the survival and perpetuation of Judaism.

Date: 2000-08
Note: IO
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as Carlton, Dennis W & Weiss, Avi, 2001. "The Economics of Religion, Jewish Survival, and Jewish Attitudes toward Competition in Torah Education," Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 253-75, January.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7863.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Economics of Religion, Jewish Survival, and Jewish Attitudes toward Competition in Torah Education (2001)
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:nbr:nberwo:7863

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7863

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().