T H E C Ar Lo a Lber T O Not Ebo Ok S
From Farmers to Merchants, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History Maristella Botticini Zvi Eckstein No.2, May 2006 www.collegiocarloalberto.it THE CARLO ALBERTO NOTEBOOKS From Farmers to Merchants, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History1 Maristella Botticini2 and Zvi Eckstein3 February 20064 1 Special thanks to Claudia Goldin and Joel Mokyr for their insightful and detailed comments. We also had very helpful discussions with Robert Barro, Eli Berman, Robert Brody, Barry and Carmel Chiswick, Mark R. Cohen, Sergio DellaPergola, Stanley Engerman, Stefano Fenoaltea, Moshe Gil, Nachum Gross, Adi Karni, Moshe Kasher, Steven Katz, Ephraim Kleiman, Bernard Lewis, Erzo Luttmer, Robert Margo, Rachel McCleary, Jacob Neusner, Aharon Oppenheimer, Yossef Rapoport, Kenneth Sokoloff, Peter Temin, and Jeffrey Williamson. Participants in many seminars and con- ferences gave helpful comments. Dalit Engelhardt, Dan Goldenberg, Polina Kroik, Eliezer Moav, Claudia Rei, and Maria Cecilia Vieira da Silva provided outstanding research assistance. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant SES-0318364), the Ministero del- l’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (COFIN-2003), and the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 815-04), and for Botticini by a John M. Olin Junior Faculty fellowship (2000-2001) and an Alfred P. Sloan research fellowship (2002-2004). This paper contains a portion of our November 2002 draft “From Farmers to Merchants,” available as CEPR Discussion Paper #3718. 2 Fondazione Collegio Carlo Alberto, Università di Torino, Boston University, CHILD, and CEPR. 3 Tel Aviv University, University of Minnesota, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and CEPR. 4 c 2006 by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein.
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