Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/208596 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
Working paper No. 5-2019
Publisher: 
Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Department of Economics, Frederiksberg
Abstract: 
The public mechanical clock and the movable type printing press were two of the most important and complex general purpose technologies of the late medieval period. We document two of their most important, yet unforeseeable, consequences. First, an instrumental variables analysis indicates that towns that were early adopters of clocks were more likely to also be early adopters of presses. We posit that towns with clocks became upper-tail human capital hubs - both technologies required extensive technical know-how that had many points of overlap. Second, a three-stage instrumental variables analysis indicates that the press influenced the adoption of Lutheranism and Calvinism, while the clock’s effect on the Reformation was indirect (via the press).
Subjects: 
mechanical clock
printing press
technology
Reformation
human capital
Calvinism
Lutheranism
instrumental variables
JEL: 
N33
N73
O33
O34
P48
Z12
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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