IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-701789.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution and the Origins of Private Property

Author

Listed:
  • Samuel Bowles
  • Jung-Kyoo Choi

Abstract

Familiar explanations of why hunter-gatherers first took up farming—superior labor productivity, population pressure, or adverse climate—receive little support from recent evidence. Farming would be an unlikely choice without possession-based private property, which appears to have existed among rare groups of sedentary hunter-gatherers who became the first farmers. Our model shows that among them, farming could have benefited first adopters because private possession was more readily established and defended for cultivated crops and domesticated animals than for the diffuse wild resources on which hunter-gatherers relied, thus explaining how farming could have been introduced even without a productivity advantage.

Suggested Citation

  • Samuel Bowles & Jung-Kyoo Choi, 2019. "The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution and the Origins of Private Property," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(5), pages 2186-2228.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/701789
    DOI: 10.1086/701789
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/701789
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/701789
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/701789?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Alger, Ingela, 2021. "On the evolution of male competitiveness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 228-254.
    2. La Ferrara, Eliana & Gulesci, Selim & Jindani, Sam & Smerdon, David & Sulaiman, Munshi & Young, H. Peyton, 2021. "A Stepping Stone Approach to Understanding Harmful Norms," CEPR Discussion Papers 15776, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Federico, Giovanni & Bisin, Alberto, 2021. "Merger or acquisition? An introduction to the Handbook of Historical economics," CEPR Discussion Papers 15795, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Amirova, Iroda & Petrick, Martin & Djanibekov, Nodir, 2022. "Community, state and market: Understanding historical water governance evolution in Central Asia," IAMO Discussion Papers 327298, Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    5. repec:zbw:iamodp:327298 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Israel Eruchimovitch & Moti Michaeli & Assaf Sarid, 2024. "On the coevolution of individualism and institutions," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 391-432, September.
    7. Lopes, Tiago Camarinha, 2022. "Humans, technology and control: An essay based on the metalanguage of economic calculation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 631-642.
    8. Martina Cioni & Giovanni Federico & Michelangelo Vasta, 2022. "Persistence studies: a new kind of economic history?," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 42(3), pages 227-248, December.
    9. Minniti, Maria & Naudé, Wim & Stam, Erik, 2023. "Is Productive Entrepreneurship Getting Scarcer? A Reflection on the Contemporary Relevance of Baumol's Typology," IZA Discussion Papers 16408, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Kandace D. Hollenbach & Stephen B. Carmody, 2022. "From foraging to farming: Domesticating landscapes in the Midsouth three thousand years ago," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 240-256, June.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/701789. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    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.