How Communities Create Economic Advantage: Jewish Diamond Merchants in New York

From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History∗

Since the Middle Ages the Jews have been engaged primarily in urban, skilled occupations, such as crafts, trade, Þnance, 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 argue that this transition was the outcome of the widespread literacy among Jews prompted by an educationa...

Haptoglobin frequencies in Jewish communities.

The variation of the haptogIobins of human plasma was shown by Smithies (1955) and Smithies & Walker (1956, 1956) to be a Mendelian trait controlled by two alleles. These two alleles, Hpl and Hp2, co-exist generally in human populations, and their relative proportions exhibit geographic variation. Additional haptoglobin variants have been detected, but their genetic relationships to the first t...

How can virtual communities create value for business?

Virtual communities include everything from discussion boards to massive multiplayer online role-playing games and virtual realities such as Second Life. The business world has assumed that virtual communities can be leveraged to provide access to consumers and consumer data. The benefits of this assumption have not always been realized. The purpose of this article is to understand why some bus...

Leading Economic Indexes for New York State and New Jersey

espite the unusual length of the current expansion, few economists are ready to repudiate the business cycle. In particular, imbalances in the U.S. economy may develop rather quickly and result in either a slowdown or actual contraction in economic activity. The pattern of recurrent transitions between periods of economic expansion and contraction is of practical interest to consumers, business...

Do new competitors , new customers , new suppliers , . . . sustain , destroy or create competitive advantage ?