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Division of labor and division of knowledge are so important andcommon in society today that it is almost impossible to imagine asociety where everyone knows the same things and perform the sametasks. This would be a society where everyone grows, or gathers, andprepares their own food, makes their own tools, builds their ownhouse, and so on.

Cultural evolution is the field of research that studies the creationand diffusion of ideas and societies. It is very uncommon for thesestudies to take into account the effects of specialization. Thisthesis will show that specialization is of great importance tocultural evolution.

The thesis is divided into three parts: one introduction and two papers. The introduction covers the mathematical models used byeconomists to study the relation between the market and division oflabor. The first paper is an interdisciplinary survey of the researchon division of labor and specialization, including both theoretic andempirical studies. The second paper is a mathematical model of howspecialization of knowledge (i.e. higher education) leads to socialstratification. The model is tested against statistical data fromseveral countries and found to be a good predictor of the differencesin income between people of high and low education.

Division of labor and division of knowledge are so important and common in society today that it is difficult to imagine a functional society where everyone knows the same things and performs the same tasks. In such a society everyone grows, or gathers, and prepares their own food, makes their own tools, builds their own house, and so on.

Cultural evolution is the field of research that studies the creation and diffusion of ideas and societies. It is very uncommon for these studies to take into account the effects of specialization. This thesis will show that specialization is of great importance to cultural evolution.

The thesis is divided into two parts: The first is an introduction to studies of specialization and division of labor. The thesis begins with an interdisciplinary survey of the research on division of labor and specialization, including both theoretic and empirical studies. Next is an introduction to modeling specialization and division of labor. This includes a general framework and a number of basic models of different aspects of specialization and division of labor.

Part two consists of four papers. The first paper studies the interaction between specialization and cultural cumulation. The second and third papers examine cultural cumulation, specifically the circumstances under which cultural knowledge increases and how cultural knowledge is distributed in the population. The last paper is a mathematical model of how specialization of knowledge (i.e. higher education) leads to social stratification.