Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14509
Authors: David de la Croix; Frédéric Docquier; Alice Fabre; Robert Stelter
Abstract: We argue that market forces shaped the geographic distribution of upper-tail human capital across Europe during the Middle Ages, and contributed to bolstering universities at the dawn of the Humanistic and Scientific Revolutions. We build a unique database of thousands of scholars from university sources covering all of Europe, construct an index of their ability, and map the academic market in the medieval and early modern periods. We show that scholars tended to concentrate in the best universities (agglomeration), that better scholars were more sensitive to the quality of the university (positive sorting) and migrated over greater distances (positive selection). Agglomeration, selection and sorting patterns testify to a functioning academic market, made possible by political fragmentation and the use of a common language (Latin).
Keywords: upper-tail human capital; universities; discrete choice model; scholars; publications; agglomeration
JEL Codes: N33; O15; I25
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| university quality (I23) | scholar location decisions (R32) |
| university notability (Y40) | scholar mobility (J61) |
| higher human capital (J24) | settlement in prestigious universities (I23) |
| higher human capital (J24) | settlement in attractive cities (R23) |
| number of universities (I23) | dynamics of academic mobility (J61) |