IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-137-53761-4_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

How Community Institutions Create Economic Advantage: Jewish Diamond Merchants in New York

In: The Global Diamond Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Barak D. Richman

    (Duke University)

Abstract

This article argues that Jewish merchants have historically dominated the diamond industry because of their ability to reliably implement diamond credit sales. Success in the industry requires enforcing executory agreements that are beyond the reach of public courts, and Jewish diamond merchants enforce such contracts with a reputation mechanism supported by a dis tinctive set of industry, family, and community institutions. An industry arbitration system publicizes promises that are not kept. Intergenerational legacies induce merchants to deal honestly through their very last trans action, so that their children may inherit valuable livelihoods. And ultra-Orthodox Jews, for whom participation in their communities is paramount, provide important value-added services to the industry without posing the threat of theft and flight.

Suggested Citation

  • Barak D. Richman, 2006. "How Community Institutions Create Economic Advantage: Jewish Diamond Merchants in New York," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Roman Grynberg & Letsema Mbayi (ed.), The Global Diamond Industry, chapter 2, pages 44-86, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-53761-4_3
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137537614_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janet Landa, 2008. "The bioeconomics of homogeneous middleman groups as adaptive units: Theory and empirical evidence viewed from a group selection framework," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 259-278, December.
    2. Janet Landa, 2009. "Homogeneous middleman groups as superorganisms, endogamous ethnic groups, and trust networks: Reply to comments on Janet Landa’s target article, ‘The bioeconomics of homogeneous middleman groups as ad," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 191-199, August.
    3. Munshi, K., 2017. "Caste and the Indian Economy," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1759, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Kahanec, Martin, 2007. "Ethnic Competition and Specialization," IZA Discussion Papers 3167, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Sanchez-Pages Santiago & Straub Stéphane, 2010. "The Emergence of Institutions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-38, September.
    6. Ruffle Bradley J. & Sosis Richard, 2007. "Does It Pay To Pray? Costly Ritual and Cooperation," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-37, March.
    7. Andrén, Daniela, 2010. ""In every rank, or great or small, ’Tis industry supports us all": Romanians and ethnic Hungarians, and their wages, in transition," Working Papers 2010:1, Örebro University, School of Business.
    8. Pablo T. Spiller, 2009. "An Institutional Theory of Public Contracts: Regulatory Implications," Chapters, in: Claude Ménard & Michel Ghertman (ed.), Regulation, Deregulation, Reregulation, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Egger, Peter H. & Ehrlich, Maximilian v. & Nelson, Douglas R., 2020. "The trade effects of skilled versus unskilled migration," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 448-464.
    10. Kaivan Munshi, 2014. "Community Networks and the Process of Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(4), pages 49-76, Fall.
    11. Agata Adamska & Tomasz J. Dabrowski, 2017. "Reputacja jako instytucja: proba konceptualizacji i problemy pomiaru / Reputation as an Institution: An Attempt to Conceptualize and Measure Issues," Annales. Ethics in Economic Life, University of Lodz, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, vol. 20(2), pages 77-88, February.
    12. Jérôme Sgard, 2019. "The Private Governance of a Global Market: The London Corn Trade Association, 1885-1914," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03594359, HAL.
    13. Colleen E. H. Berndt, 2007. "Hostile Territory: High‐Tension Religion and the Jewish Peddler," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(5), pages 1005-1027, November.
    14. Leeson,Peter T., 2014. "Anarchy Unbound," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107025806.
    15. Roth, M. Garrett & Skarbek, David, 2014. "Prison Gangs and the Community Responsibility System," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 1(3), pages 223-243, May.
    16. Wim Naudé, 2007. "Peace, Prosperity, and Pro-Growth Entrepreneurship," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2007-02, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Brian Cevallos Fujiy & Gaurav Khanna & Hiroshi Toma, 2022. "Cultural Proximity and Production Networks," Working Papers 686, Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan.
    18. Henningsen, Geraldine & Henningsen, Arne & Henning, Christian H.C.A., 2011. "Measuring the Influence of Information Networks on Transaction Costs Using a Non-parametric Regression Technique," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114547, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. Sebastian Henn & Eric Laureys, 2010. "Bridging Ruptures: The Re-emergence of the Antwerp Diamond District After World War II and the Role of Strategic Action," Chapters, in: Dirk Fornahl & Sebastian Henn & Max-Peter Menzel (ed.), Emerging Clusters, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Cochrane, David Troy, 2015. "What’s Love Got to Do with It? Diamonds and the Accumulation of De Beers, 1935-55," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157995, July.
    21. Jérôme Sgard, 2019. "The Private Governance of a Global Market: The London Corn Trade Association, 1885-1914," Working Papers hal-03594359, HAL.
    22. Smita Srinivas, 2023. "India and ‘European’ evolutionary political economy," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 415-443, July.
    23. Palagashvili,Liya & Piano,Ennio & Skarbek,David, 2017. "The Decline and Rise of Institutions," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781316649176.
    24. Andrén, Daniela, 2012. "Romanians, Hungarians and their wages, in transition, in Romania," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 2673-2685.
    25. Dalhia Mani, 2021. "Who controls the Indian economy: The role of families and communities in the Indian economy," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 121-149, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-53761-4_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.