IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6612.html

The Labor/Land Ratio and India's Caste System

Author

Listed:
  • Duleep, Harriet

    (College of William and Mary)

Abstract

This paper proposes that India's caste system and involuntary labor were joint responses by a nonworking landowning class to a low labor/land ratio in which the rules of the caste system supported the institution of involuntary labor. The hypothesis is tested in two ways: longitudinally, with data from ancient religious texts, and cross-sectionally, with twentieth-century statistics on regional population/land ratios linked to anthropological measures of caste-system rigidity. Both the longitudinal and cross-sectional evidence suggest that the labor/land ratio affected the caste system's development, persistence, and rigidity over time and across regions of India.

Suggested Citation

  • Duleep, Harriet, 2012. "The Labor/Land Ratio and India's Caste System," IZA Discussion Papers 6612, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6612
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6612.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:cup:jechis:v:30:y:1970:i:01:p:18-32_07 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. David, Paul A, 1985. "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 332-337, May.
    3. repec:cup:jechis:v:33:y:1973:i:01:p:43-65_07 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:cup:jechis:v:31:y:1971:i:01:p:118-125_09 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marta Gancarczyk, 2010. "Model schyłku i odrodzenia klastrów," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 3, pages 1-21.
    2. Rehák Štefan & Hudec Oto & Buček Milan, 2013. "Path dependency and path plasticity in emerging industries: Two cases from Slovakia," ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, De Gruyter, vol. 57(1-2), pages 52-66, October.
    3. Beomjin Choi & T. S. Raghu & Ajay Vinzé & Kevin J. Dooley, 2019. "Effectiveness of standards consortia: Social network perspectives," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 405-416, April.
    4. McCloskey Deirdre Nansen, 2018. "The Two Movements in Economic Thought, 1700–2000: Empty Economic Boxes Revisited," Man and the Economy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 1-20, December.
    5. Yunyao Li & Yanji Ma, 2022. "Research on Industrial Innovation Efficiency and the Influencing Factors of the Old Industrial Base Based on the Lock-In Effect, a Case Study of Jilin Province, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-23, October.
    6. Wenjun Guo & Wei Zhao & Min Min, 2022. "Operation Scale, Transfer Experience, and Farmers’ Willingness toward Farmland Transfer-In: A Case Study of Rice–Crayfish Cultivating Regions in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-16, March.
    7. Christian Dahl Winther, 2007. "Optimal research effort and product differentiation in network industries," Economics Working Papers 2007-19, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    8. Kevin Lansing, 2009. "Time Varying U.S. Inflation Dynamics and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(2), pages 304-326, April.
    9. Habicht, Hagen & Oliveira, Pedro & Shcherbatiuk, Viktoriia, 2012. "User Innovators: When Patients Set Out to Help Themselves and End Up Helping Many," Die Unternehmung - Swiss Journal of Business Research and Practice, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 66(3), pages 277-295.
    10. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Wendlan, Nicolai, 2008. "Spatial Determinants of CBD Emergence: A Micro-level Case Study on Berlin∗," MPRA Paper 11572, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Kudic, Muhamed & Pyka, Andreas & Günther, Jutta, 2012. "Determinants of Evolutionary Change Processes in Innovation Networks – Empirical Evidence from the German Laser Industry," IWH Discussion Papers 7/2012, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    12. Carlo Borzaga & Silvia Sacchetti, 2015. "Why Social Enterprises Are Asking to Be Multi-stakeholder and Deliberative: An Explanation around the Costs of Exclusion," Euricse Working Papers 1575, Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).
    13. Vishal K. Gupta & Suman Niranjan & Banu A. Goktan & John Eriskon, 2016. "Individual entrepreneurial orientation role in shaping reactions to new technologies," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 935-961, December.
    14. Jullien, Bruno, 2001. "Competing with Network Externalities and Price Discrimination," CEPR Discussion Papers 2883, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    15. Vialle, Pierre & Song, Junjie & Zhang, Jian, 2012. "Competing with dominant global standards in a catching-up context. The case of mobile standards in China," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 832-846.
    16. Hugo Priemus & Bert van Wee (ed.), 2013. "International Handbook on Mega-Projects," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14791.
    17. John Kemp & Ted Wilson, 1999. "Monetary Regime Transformation: The scramble to gold in the late nineteenth century," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 125-149.
    18. Paul W.J. de Bijl & Sanjeev Goyal, 2002. "Market Integration and Technological Change," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 19-37, March.
    19. Julia Jouan & Aude Ridier & Matthieu Carof, 2019. "Economic Drivers of Legume Production: Approached via Opportunity Costs and Transaction Costs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-14, January.
    20. Timothy J. Foxon, 2000. "Resource Efficiency and Service Provision," Energy & Environment, , vol. 11(5), pages 587-595, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J47 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Coercive Labor Markets
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:iza:izadps:dp6612. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    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.