The origins of the division of labor in pre-industrial times
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Date
2020
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Abstract
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.
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Keywords
Comparative development, Division of labor, Economic specialization, Intra-ethnic diversity, Cultural diversity, Population diversity, Genetic diversity, Linguistic diversity