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Gil S . Epstein and Eliakim Katz | 8 taught thousands of students : very often while sitting in a café, or shopping, or just walking about, he was approached by an old student of his, who would say : “You are Professor Rosenberg . Itook a course with you Xyears ago,” where X would be anywhere from one to ( at least ) forty . This volume was compiled to honor and commemorate this remarkable man and to acknowledge his contributions . Former students, colleagues, and friends have contributed chapters of significant academic merit . One of Prof . Rosenberg’s central research interests was in the less obvious ways in which Jewish law affected society . The first few chapters deal directly with this topic . Botticini, Eckstein, and Vaturi study a fascinating case where religious norms, relating to childcare practices, had a major impact on human development : specifically, the spectacular Jewish population growth in Poland - Lithuania from 1500 to 1930 . They construct a simple model of parental investment in childcare from infancy . Tracing the differences between Jewish and non - Jewish populations in this regard directly to religious edicts, they use their model to explain the empirically observed fact that infant and child mortality among Jews was very significantly lower than in the general population . They then convincingly argue that religious edicts account for the main difference between the Jewish and non - Jewish natural population growths in eastern Europe, the center of Jewish life and religion during the early modern and modern period . Huberman and Prisman analyze an ancient Jewish law relating to agricultural land and reinterpret it in terms of modern finance . They show that certain real estate transactions in ancient Israel, as stipulated in the Bible, involved embedded financial options that appear to have been overlooked by the commentators . They address the relevant option value and demonstrate the complexity of the pricing system needed to reflect th e true market price of the underlying assets . Given that the mathematics required to do this did not exist eighteen centuries ago, it is not surprising that the rabbinical authorities were unable to fully analyze the problem .
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