Document de travail
Property Rights, Warfare and the Neolithic Transition
Robert Rowthorn et Paul Seabright
IDEI Working Paper
n° 654, novembre 2010
Référence
Robert Rowthorn et Paul Seabright, « Property Rights, Warfare and the Neolithic Transition », IDEI Working Paper, n° 654, novembre 2010.
Résumé
This paper explains the multiple adoption of agriculture around ten thousand years ago, in spite of the fact that the first farmers suffered worse health and nutrition than their hunter gatherer predecessors. If output is harder for farmers to defend, adoption may entail increased defense investments, and equilibrium consumption levels may decline as agricultural productivity increases over a significant range, before eventually increasing thereafter. Agricultural adoption may have been a prisoners’ dilemma in that adoption was individually attractive even though all groups would have been better off committing not to adopt while the initial productivity advantage of agriculture remained low.
Mots-clés
agriculture; defense; property rights; contest functions; Neolithic transition;
Codes JEL
- D74: Conflict • Conflict Resolution • Alliances
- N30: General, International, or Comparative
- N40: General, International, or Comparative
- O12: Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
- O40: General
- Q10: General