Since the Middle Ages the Jews have been engaged primarily in urban, skilled occupations, such as crafts, trade, finance, and medicine. This distinctive occupational selection occurred between the seventh and the ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire and then it spread to other locations. We...

This study investigates the effect of early-life exposure to malaria on disease and work level in old age over the past one and a half centuries. Using longitudinal lifetime records of Union Army veterans, I first estimate that exposure to a malarial environment in early life (c.1840)...

Mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time, starting in a few countries in the 18th century, and continuing to fall today. In just the past century, life expectancy has increased by over 30 years. At the same time, mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries, with a difference...

From the end of the second century C.E., Judaism enforced a religious norm requiring Jewish fathers to educate their sons. We present evidence supporting our thesis that this change in the religious and social norm had a major influence on Jewish economic and demographic history. First, the high...

From the end of the second century C.E., Judaism enforced a religious norm requiring any Jewish father to educate his children. We present evidence supporting our thesis that this exogenous change in the religious and social norm had a major influence on Jewish economic and demographic history....

By exploiting more than 4,500 unpublished dowry contracts written in Florence between 1242 and 1435, I am able to present the first systematic analysis of dowry trends and bequest behavior in medieval and early Renaissance Florence. I examine the effects of demographic shocks and changes in...

Path dependence in occupations refers to the observed occupational distribution in a population or in a sub-population at a point in time that depends on changes that occurred years or centuries earlier. Path dependence in occupations can be the outcome of the cumulative concentration of certain...

Dramatic fertility swings over the last 100 years have been the subject of large literatures in demography and economics. Recent research has claimed that the post-1960 fertility decline is exceptional enough to constitute a "Second Demographic Transition." The empirical case for a Second...

This article studies temporal variations in wealth levels and distribution in an Ottoman context during the eighteenth century. By analysing the probate estate inventories of the Muslim deceased in Kastamonu, located in north-central Anatolia, we demonstrate that real wealth levels generally...

Court records are used extensively in historical research. Preserved as summaries of daily legal proceedings, they give historians a unique opportunity of access to the information about the names, personal characteristics, and socio-economic status of individuals and about the laws, local...