Patterns of Jewish Economic Behavior in Central Europe in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This chapter constitutes an attempt to suggest certain characteristics and common patterns in the economic behavior of Jews in Central Europe between the two World Wars. It focuses on Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the three major heirs of the Habsburg Empire. Growth patterns of Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were such that due to higher productivity in agriculture and manufacture, the share of the tertiary sectors in the labor force was increasing. All the economic changes adversely affected the socioeconomic optimization of the Jew in Central Europe or wherever similar behavioral patterns were adopted. In short, the patterns of occupational composition of the Jewish minority went through a radical metamorphosis during the first four decades of the twentieth century. It is possible that the findings about Jewish economic behavior are not uniquely Jewish but reflect patterns of behavior of minorities with certain cultural attributes at large.