Alessandro Cigno (Università di Firenze)

We show that the descendants of primeval plough users have an interest in maintaining the gender division of labour which was originally justified on comparative-advantage grounds, even though in a modern economy individual productivity depends on education rather than physical characteristics. The result rests on the argument that the contract enforcement institutions developed in response to the availability of the plough serve a purpose also in a modern economy because of a possible hold-up problem in the implementation of a Nash-bargaining equilibrium with domestic division of labour.

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