Browsing by Author "Ozak, Omer"

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    (De facto) historical ethnic borders and land tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (2024) Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio; Ozak, Omer
    We study the role of proximity to historical ethnic borders in determining individual land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Following an instrumental variable strategy, we document that individuals have a lower likelihood of owning land near historical ethnic borders. In particular, the likelihood of owning land decreases by 15 percentage points, i.e., about 1/3 of the mean rate of landownership, for rural migrants who move from 57 km (90th percentile) to 2 km (10th percentile) from the border. This result aligns with the view that competition for land is stronger and property rights are weaker close to historical ethnic borders in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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    The origins of the division of labor in pre-industrial times
    (2020) Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio; Ozak, Omer
    This research explores the historical roots of the division of labor in pre-industrial societies. Exploiting a variety of identification strategies and a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it shows that higher levels of intra-ethnic diversity were conducive to economic specialization in the pre-industrial era. The findings are robust to a host of geographical, institutional, cultural and historical confounders, and suggest that variation in intra-ethnic diversity is a key predictor of the division of labor in pre-industrial times.