IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ajecsc/v66y2007i5p1005-1027.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hostile Territory: High‐Tension Religion and the Jewish Peddler

Author

Listed:
  • Colleen E. H. Berndt

Abstract

. Scholars have long explored the role that reputation plays in the facilitation of exchange. Some attention has also been paid to the way in which religions serve as a proxy for reputation or as a mechanism for enforcement of exchange agreements. These reputation and enforcement mechanisms enhance the ability of the members of certain religious groups to perform economic roles where such secular‐based mechanisms fail or are absent. In this article, I explore the ways in which hostility toward members of high‐tension religions makes them uniquely well suited to the economic role of middlemen. As illustration, I explore the particular case of the 19th‐century German Jewish peddler in the young United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Colleen E. H. Berndt, 2007. "Hostile Territory: High‐Tension Religion and the Jewish Peddler," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(5), pages 1005-1027, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:66:y:2007:i:5:p:1005-1027
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2007.00534.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2007.00534.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2007.00534.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barzel, Yoram, 1992. "Confiscation by the Ruler: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Lending in the Middle Ages," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 1-13, April.
    2. Greif, Avner, 1993. "Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: the Maghribi Traders' Coalition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 525-548, June.
    3. Barak D. Richman, 2006. "How Community Institutions Create Economic Advantage: Jewish Diamond Merchants in New York," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Roman Grynberg & Letsema Mbayi (ed.), The Global Diamond Industry, chapter 2, pages 44-86, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Iannaccone, Laurence R, 1992. "Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 271-291, April.
    5. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    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. Tom Potoms & Tom Truyts, 2020. "Unhappy is the land without symbols - Group symbols in infinitely repeated public good games," Working Paper Series 1720, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.

    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. Roth, M. Garrett & Skarbek, David, 2014. "Prison Gangs and the Community Responsibility System," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 1(3), pages 223-243, May.
    2. Janet Landa, 2008. "The bioeconomics of homogeneous middleman groups as adaptive units: Theory and empirical evidence viewed from a group selection framework," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 259-278, December.
    3. Heinsalu, Sander, 2020. "Investing to access an adverse selection market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    4. Sanchez-Pages Santiago & Straub Stéphane, 2010. "The Emergence of Institutions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-38, September.
    5. Trevon D. Logan & Manisha Shah, 2013. "Face Value: Information and Signaling in an Illegal Market," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(3), pages 529-564, January.
    6. Haucap, Justus, 2017. "The rule of law and the emergence of market exchange: A new institutional economic perspective," DICE Discussion Papers 276, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    7. Ruffle Bradley J. & Sosis Richard, 2007. "Does It Pay To Pray? Costly Ritual and Cooperation," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-37, March.
    8. Coyne, Christopher J. & Mathers, Rachel L., 2011. "Rituals: An economic interpretation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 74-84.
    9. Ignace Adant & Pierre Fleckinger, 2005. "Controling externalities with asymmetric information : Ferrous Scrap Recycling and the Gold Rush Problem," Working Papers hal-00243017, HAL.
    10. 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).
    11. Pablo T. Spiller, 2009. "An Institutional Theory of Public Contracts: Regulatory Implications," Chapters, in: Claude Ménard & Michel Ghertman (ed.), Regulation, Deregulation, Reregulation, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Conning, Jonathan & Udry, Christopher, 2007. "Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: Robert Evenson & Prabhu Pingali (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 56, pages 2857-2908, Elsevier.
    13. Rapoport, Hillel & Weiss, Avi, 2003. "The optimal size for a minority," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 27-45, September.
    14. Juan Prieto-Rodriguez & Manuel Gonzalez-Díaz, 2008. "Is There an Economic Rent for Island Hotels?," Tourism Economics, , vol. 14(1), pages 131-154, March.
    15. Rohini Somanathan, 2016. "Group Inequality in Democracies: Lessons from Cross-National Experiences," Working Papers id:11335, eSocialSciences.
    16. Colvin, Christopher L., 2017. "Banking on a Religious Divide: Accounting for the Success of the Netherlands' Raiffeisen Cooperatives in the Crisis of the 1920s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(3), pages 866-919, September.
    17. Spring, Eva & Grossmann, Volker, 2013. "Does Bilateral Trust Affect International Movement of Goods and Labor?," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79956, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    18. Vincent Geloso & Louis Rouanet, 2023. "Ethnogenesis and statelessness," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 377-407, June.
    19. Benito Arruñada, 2016. "Coase and the departure from property," Chapters, in: Claude Ménard & Elodie Bertrand (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Ronald H. Coase, chapter 22, pages 305-319, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Erik Durbin, 2000. "McDonald's or the Michelin Guide? Revealing Quality Through Private-Sector Certification," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1097, Econometric Society.

    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:bla:ajecsc:v:66:y:2007:i:5:p:1005-1027. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0002-9246 .

    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.