IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/7863.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • Dennis W. Carlton
  • Avi Weiss

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Dennis W. Carlton & Avi Weiss, 2000. "The Economics of Religion, Jewish Survival and Jewish Attitudes Toward Competition in Torah Education," NBER Working Papers 7863, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7863
    Note: IO
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7863.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    2. Laurence R. Iannaccone, 1998. "Introduction to the Economics of Religion," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1465-1495, September.
    3. Bulow, Jeremy I & Geanakoplos, John D & Klemperer, Paul D, 1985. "Multimarket Oligopoly: Strategic Substitutes and Complements," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(3), pages 488-511, June.
    4. Becker, Gary S & Murphy, Kevin M, 1988. "A Theory of Rational Addiction," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 675-700, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Botticini, Maristella & Eckstein, Zvi, 2005. "Jewish Occupational Selection: Education, Restrictions, or Minorities?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(4), pages 922-948, December.
    2. Botticini, Maristella & Eckstein, Zvi, 2002. "From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History," IZA Discussion Papers 670, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Dafeng Xu & Yuxin Zhang, 2022. "Identifying ethnic occupational segregation," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 1261-1296, July.

    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. Kiminori Matsuyama, 1991. "Custom Versus Fashion: Path-Dependence and Limit Cycles in a Random Matching Game," Discussion Papers 1030, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    2. Rotemberg, Julio J, 1994. "Human Relations in the Workplace," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 684-717, August.
    3. Elisabeth Gugl & Linda Welling, 2007. "The Early Bird gets the Worm? Birth Order Effects in a Dynamic Model of the Family," Department Discussion Papers 0710, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    4. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.
    5. Don Kenkel, 2012. "Health Behaviours Among Young People," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Heinz Welsch & Jan Kühling, 2016. "Green status seeking and endogenous reference standards," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 18(4), pages 625-643, October.
    7. Rapoport, Hillel & Vidal, Jean-Pierre, 2007. "Economic growth and endogenous intergenerational altruism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1231-1246, August.
    8. Berger, Lawrence M., 2004. "Income, family structure, and child maltreatment risk," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(8), pages 725-748, August.
    9. John S. Earle & Klara Sabirianova Peter, 2006. "Complementarity and Custom in Contract Violation," Upjohn Working Papers 06-129, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    10. Sébastien Rouillon, 2017. "Cooperative and Noncooperative Extraction in a Common Pool with Habit Formation," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 468-491, September.
    11. Ronald Wintrobe, 2019. "Adam Smith and the Buddha," Rationality and Society, , vol. 31(1), pages 3-39, February.
    12. Brown, Sarah & McHardy, Jolian & Taylor, Karl, 2014. "Intergenerational analysis of social interaction and social skills: An analysis of U.S. and U.K. panel data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 43-54.
    13. Russell N. James & Deanna L. Sharpe, 2007. "The “Sect Effect” in Charitable Giving: Distinctive Realities of Exclusively Religious Charitable Givers," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(4), pages 697-726, October.
    14. Mertzanis, Charilaos & Pavlopoulos, Athanasios & Vetsikas, Apostolos & Reppas, Dimitrios & Hamill, Philip A., 2023. "Religion and the financing of corporate investment around the world," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    15. Li, Chunxiao & Gilleskie, Donna B., 2021. "The influence of endogenous behaviors among social pairs: Social interaction effects of smoking," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    16. Ayman Reda, 2012. "Religious Charities and Government Funding," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 18(3), pages 331-342, August.
    17. Cox, Donald & Eser, Zekeriya & Jimenez, Emmanuel, 1998. "Motives for private transfers over the life cycle: An analytical framework and evidence for Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 57-80, February.
    18. McBride, Michael, 2015. "Why churches need free-riders: Religious capital formation and religious group survival," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 77-87.
    19. Robert Pollak, 2003. "Gary Becker's Contributions to Family and Household Economics," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 111-141, January.
    20. William S. Schulze & Michael H. Lubatkin & Richard N. Dino & Ann K. Buchholtz, 2001. "Agency Relationships in Family Firms: Theory and Evidence," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 99-116, April.

    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:nbr:nberwo:7863. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.