Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/141587 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9828
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
dissemination of knowledge
guilds
clans
apprenticeship
JEL: 
E02
J24
N10
N30
O33
O43
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
314.17 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.