Bio
Serge Svizzero is a Full Professor of Economics at the Université de La Réunion, where he has been a faculty member since joining as a full-time professor. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics. His research interests span economic anthropology, agricultural transitions, and the domestication of crops, as evidenced by his publications on population pressure and the transition to agriculture, as well as the outcrossing-selfing transition in Asian rice domestication. He has published extensively, with 24 international and 2 national papers, and serves as an editorial board member and peer reviewer for several journals. He is also actively involved in supervising scholars and leading research projects.
Educational Journey
Ph.D in Economics Full Professor of Economics
Experience
Research
Population Pressure and the Transition to Agriculture
Is it food shortage or food abundance which explains the transition from foraging to farming? The academic literature is divided. We use the notion of population pressure – defined as the ratio of population density over the stock of wild food resources – to answer this question. We demonstrate that the significant changes of the population pressure are only temporary and have asymmetric effects on hunter-gatherers’ behaviors. Food shortages increase population pressure but do not trigger the shift to agriculture. Indeed, the common property regime as well as the common sharing of resources and knowledge hinder any incentive to innovate and to produce more effort. On the contrary, food abundance induces the advent of exclusive property rights, the disappearance of sharing and therefore stimulates effort and innovation. Since food abundance is a feature of complex hunter-gatherer societies, the latter are more likely at the origin of the transition to agriculture.
