Working Paper: NBER ID: w22131
Authors: David de la Croix; Matthias Doepke; Joel Mokyr
Abstract: In the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, Western Europe gradually pulled ahead of other world regions in terms of technological creativity, population growth, and income per capita. We argue that superior institutions for the creation and dissemination of productive knowledge help explain the European advantage. We build a model of technological progress in a pre-industrial economy that emphasizes the person-to-person transmission of tacit knowledge. The young learn as apprentices from the old. Institutions such as the family, the clan, the guild, and the market organize who learns from whom. We argue that medieval European institutions such as guilds, and specific features such as journeymanship, can explain the rise of Europe relative to regions that relied on the transmission of knowledge within extended families or clans.
Keywords: apprenticeship; economic growth; knowledge transmission; guilds; preindustrial economy
JEL Codes: E02; J24; N10; N30; O33; O43
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| superior institutions for the creation and dissemination of productive knowledge (O39) | economic growth (O49) |
| medieval European institutions like guilds (B11) | faster dissemination of new productive knowledge (O36) |
| guild system (P13) | broader access to diverse knowledge and techniques (O36) |
| clan system (P32) | limited diversity of knowledge (D80) |
| limited diversity of knowledge (D80) | slower technological progress (O49) |