Research program : Upper Tail Human Capital and the Rise of the West

Introduction: During the period spanning 1000 to 1800, the Western world ascended to global dominance through a series of transformative revolutions: the "Urban Revolution", the "Humanistic Revolution," the "Scientific Revolution," the "Enlightenment", and, finally, the "Industrial Revolution." This project seeks to explore the pivotal role of knowledge institutions, such as universities and academies, as well as the contributions of scholars and literati in this historical ascent. We aim to determine whether the pursuit of knowledge and intellectual advancement were essential drivers of this global primacy or if they were merely a consequence of economic enrichment.

Research Question: Our central question is: Were knowledge institutions like universities and academies indispensable for the rise of the West during this period? What are the features of these institutions which paved the way to growth? How were scholars and literati pivotal in shaping this development? Alternatively, could the enthusiasm for knowledge be seen as a mere byproduct of economic prosperity?

Database and Methodology: To address these critical questions, we will assemble a comprehensive database of individuals associated with universities and scientific societies across Europe during the specified timeframe. Our emphasis on a European perspective is deliberate, as it enables us to uncover mobility and network patterns that are crucial for understanding the broader global context.

Funding: This ambitious research program has been made possible by generous funding from the European Union. Since 2021, we have received an ERC Advanced Grant, which supports the in-depth exploration of this fascinating period in history.
ERC


Team

photo mara photo chiara photo matthew photo filippo

Dr. Mara Vitale homepage, Ms. Chiara Zanardello homepage, Dr. Matthew Curtis homepage, Mr. Filippo Manfredini

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Broad audience content

Published Results (click on title to expand)

The few women active in academia during the medieval and early modern periods testify to an intriguing difference between Catholic and Protestant Europe.

Women in European Academia before 1800 - Religion, Marriage, and Human Capital, European Review of Economic History, 27(4), 506-532[with M. Vitale]

abstract abstract | pdf article | appendix appendix | slides slides | blog blog | blog | homepage Vitale

Laura Bassi, prof. at U. Bologna

Catholic Censorship and the Demise of Knowledge Production. Censorship makes new ideas less available to others, but also reduces the number of people choosing to develop non-compliant ideas. We propose a new method to measure the effect of censorship on knowledge growth, accounting for the agents' choice between compliant and non-compliant occupations. We apply our method to the Catholic Church's censorship of books written by members of Italian universities and academies over the period 1400-1750. We highlight new facts: once censorship was introduced, censored authors were of better quality than the non-censored authors, but this gap shrank over time, and the intensity of censorship decreased over time. We use these facts to identify the deep parameters of a novel endogenous growth model that links censorship to knowledge diffusion and occupational choice. We conclude that the average log publication per scholar in Italy would have been 43% higher if censorship had not been present, while the effect of adverse macroeconomic processes is almost four times smaller. The induced reallocation of talents towards compliant activities explains half the effect of censorship.

Catholic Censorship and the Demise of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Italy, The Economic Journal 133(656), 2899-2924 [with F. Blasutto]

haiku haiku | abstract abstract | pdf article | appendix appendix | data codes and data | slides slides | fabio blasutto photo | homepage Blasutto

Right panel: Distribution of published authors by quality. Red: censored. Green: non-censored


Distribution of published authors by quality. Red: censored. Green: non-censored.

Agglomeration and sorting patterns among medieval and early modern scholars testify to a functioning academic market in Europe. Such market forces shaped the geographic distribution of upper-tail human capital, and contributed to bolstering European universities at the dawn of the Humanistic and Scientific Revolutions.

The video on the right maps the university-scholar dyads over time. Red dots correspond to universities. Blue dots represent scholars' birthplaces. Size of blue dots are function of publications. The dashed lines link academic scholars' birth place to the university for which they taught through the least costly path, using the human mobility index of Ömer Özak.

The Academic Market and the Rise of Universities in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1000-1800) Journal of the European Economic Association [with F. Docquier, A. Fabre and R. Stelter]

pdf article | appendix appendix | data codes and data | slides slides | homepage Docquier | homepage Fabre | homepage Stelter

See the video .

In a related paper, Chiara Zanardello proposes a comparison of market forces between the past and today in the case of Italy. She estimates the strength of different factors: gravity (distance), agglomeration (scholars are attracted to higher quality universities), selection (better scholars travel longer distances), and sorting (the better the scholar, the more the quality of universities is weighted). She finds that all of these factors have an effect, although sorting was stronger during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance than today. She also find a greater expected utility for scholars in choosing private universities over public ones, through a consistent nesting procedure.

Zanardello, Chiara, Market forces in Italian Academia today (and yesterday) Scientometrics https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04579-0

pdf article

photo poster Chiara

Preliminary Results (click on title to expand)

One theory for the rise of the West argues that universities and academics played a central role. However, there have be no quantitative studies of historical academia and growth for Europe as a whole. This paper develops a methodology to measure academic productivity using a large novel database of scholars 1000--1800. We find that the output of academics predicts 19th century economic growth. We provide European-wide evidence that the science paved the way for the Industrial Revolution, and that theological values and legal systems mattered for economic development.

Seeds of Knowledge: Premodern Scholarship, Academic Fields, and European Growth, CEPR Working Paper 18321 [with M. Curtis]

haiku haiku | pdf article | slides slides | homepage Curtis


We examine the relationship between family size and human capital among academics in Northern Europe over the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution. To measure scholars' human capital, we develop a novel and consistent approach based on their publications. We nd that scholars with a high number of publications shifted from having more siblings to having fewer than others during the rst half of the 18th century. This shift is consistent with an evolutionary growth model in which the initial Malthusian constraint leads the high human capital families to reproduce more, before being endogenously substituted by a Beckerian constraint with a child qualityquantity tradeo. Our results support a reinterpretation of the Galor and Moav (2002)'s approach, in which the decline of Malthusian constraints is linked to human capital accumulation during the 18th century.

The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics, LIDAM/IRES Discussion Paper 2023 / 15 [with T. Baudin]

haiku haiku | pdf article | homepage Baudin


Human capital transmission and Nepotism. From the Bernoullis to the Eulers, families of scholars have been common in academia since the foundation of the first medieval universities. In this paper, we have shown that this was the result of two factors: First, scholar's sons benefited from their fathers' connections to be nominated to academic positions in their father's university. Before 1800, one in ten scholars' sons were nepotic scholars. They became academics even when their underlying human capital was 2.4 standard deviations lower than that of marginal outsider scholars. Second, scholars transmitted their sons a set of underlying endowments, i.e., human capital and abilities, that were crucial for the production of scientific knowledge. Our estimates suggest a large intergenerational elasticity of such endowments, as high as 0.6.

Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088--1800) CEPR Discussion Paper 15159 [with M. Goñi]

pdf article | slides slides | homepage Goñi


Chicoyneau family

The Network of Universities and the Protestant Reformation. For a long time, the European academic world was an interconnected network with scholars moving positions at will. With the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, the academic world became divided. Few people held positions in both worlds. We show in this paper that this religious divide had asymmetric consequences. The Catholic South lost centrality in the network of universities, and this was not fully compensated by the creation of new universities by the very dynamic Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Publications in the Catholic world peaked at their pre-reform level. On the Protestant side, the converted universities tended to gain centrality, while newly created universities quickly came to enjoy a central position, in particular in the Lutheran and Calvinist worlds. This ascension to primacy goes together with higher and rising publication levels.

Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities IRES Discussion Paper 2020-029 [with P. Morault]

pdf article | appendix appendix | slides slides | pauline photo | homepage Morault


network of universities after the Protestant Reformation

Dissemination activities

photo Les Treilles
Invited presentation on "Le monde académique et l’émergence de l’Occident – pistes à partir d’une nouvelle base de données des érudits européens, 1000-1800" at a conference on « Des problèmes en partage, des méthodologies divergentes, le regard croisé d'historiens et d'économistes », May 31 2021 - June 4 2021, Fondation des Treilles, Tourtour (Var, France).

photo Copenhagen business school
Invited seminar at the Copenhagen business school (Denmark) on « Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088-1800) », September 20, 2021.

photo Manchester
Invited seminar at the University of Cergy-Pontoise (France) on « Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088-1800) », September 30,2021.

photo Copenhagen business school
Invited seminar at the University of Clermont-Ferrand (France) on « Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088-1800) », October 11, 2021, picture with Eric Roca and Simone Bertoli.

photo Leuven
Invited participation to Magister Dixit conference at the University of Leuven (Belgium) on « European Academia (1000-1800) and the Rise of the West », October 15, 2021

photo Les Treilles
Avec Dominique Julia, Journées d’études organisées par Jean Boutier et Jacques Revel Jeudi 18 novembre 2021 et Vendredi 19 novembre 2021, EHESS. Talk on « Une base de données des académiques de l’Europe pré-industrielle. Qui trop embrasse mal étreint ? » (picture with Patrick Ferté)

photo Stockholm business school
Invited seminar at the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden) on « Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088-1800) », December 2, 2021

photo Lund
Invited seminar at the University of Lund (Sweden) on « Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088-1800) », December 7, 2021,

photo University College Dublin
Invited seminar at the University College Dublin (Ireland) on « Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities », February 4, 2022.

photo University College Dublin
Invited seminar at the Carlos III University in Madrid (Spain) on « Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities », February 18, 2022.

photo Chiara talk
Chiara Zanardello first presentation on her paper « Market forces in Italian Academia today (and yesterday) », at the internal seminar, March 1, 2022

photo Sapienza
Seminar at La Sapienza in Rome (Italy) on « Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities », March 14 2022, picture with Jacob Weisdorf.

photo Rome
Invited seminar at Luiss university in Rome (Italy) on « Catholic Censorship and the Demise of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Italy », March 16.

photo GATE Lyon
Invited seminar at GATE, University of Lyon (France) on « Catholic Censorship and the Demise of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Italy », March 28.

photo Brown
Annual meeting of the research group on the "Deep-Rooted Factors of Comparative Development". Brown University, on Saturday and Sunday, 7-8 May 2022. Talk on « Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088-1800) »

photo Manchester
"Early modern science, technology, and institutions" conference, University of Manchester, May 13, 2022. Talk on «The Academic Market and the Rise of Universities in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1000-1800)»

photo Manchester
Chiara poster presentation at the "Early modern science, technology, and institutions" conference, University of Manchester, May 13, 2022.

photo Padova
Invited seminar at Padua university (Italy) on « Catholic Censorship and the Demise of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Italy », May 31, 2022.

photo Toulouse
Invited seminar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse on «Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities», June 9, 2022 (picture: chat after the end of the seminar).

photo Toulouse
Invited seminar at Toulouse School of Economics on « Catholic Censorship and the Demise of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Italy », June 14, 2022 (picture: at the end of the seminar).

photo Aix
Presentation by Chiara Zanardello, AMSE Summer School "The economics of growth" on « Market forces in Italian Academia today (and yesterday)», July 7, 2022.

photo LSE
Invited seminar at London School of Economics on «Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities», September 29, 2022 (photo credit: Eric Schneider)

photo WU Vienna
Invited seminar at WU Vienna on «The Academic Market and the Rise of Universities in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1000-1800)», October 12, 2022.

photo TU Vienna
Invited seminar at TU Vienna on «Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities», October 13, 2022.

photo Uni Melbourne
Invited seminar at Uni Melbourne on «The Academic Market and the Rise of Universities in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1000-1800)», October 25, 2022.

photo TU Vienna
Invited seminar at Monash University on «The Academic Market and the Rise of Universities in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1000-1800)», October 27, 2022. (photo credit: Emilia Tjernstrom)

photo AusClio
AUSClio conference at ANU Canberra. Presenting «Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities», November 4, 2022. (photo credit: Martine Mariotti)

photo ANU
Invited seminar at ANU Canberra on «The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics», November 7, 2022.(photo credit: Martine Mariotti)

photo UNSW
Invited seminar at UNSW Sydney on «The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics», November 11, 2022.

photo PSE
Invited seminar at Paris School of Economics on «Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities», December 5, 2022.

photo poster Chiara
Poster presentation by Chiara Zanardello on «Early Modern Academies, Universities and City Growth» at the conference on Religion, culture and economic growth in historical perspective, Louvain-la-Neuve 19-20 December 2022. (photo credit: Sébastien Schillings)

photo workshop religion
Presentation on «Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities» at the conference on Religion, culture and economic growth in historical perspective, Louvain-la-Neuve 19-20 December 2022. (photo credit: Sébastien Schillings)

zoom seminar at Sussex
Invited seminar at University of Sussex on «The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics» February 1, 2023. Held online because of multiple strikes in the United-Kingdom.

photo LORDE paris
Presentation of «The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics», March 30, 2023, at the Long run dynamics economics (LORDE) 2023 workshop.

photo NYU Abu Dhabi
Invited seminar at New-York University at Abu Dhabi on «The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics» April 24, 2023.

photo Brown 23
David de la Croix and Chiara Zanardello participated to the Growth Conference: Deep-rooted Factors in Comparative Development at University of Brown, May 6-7, 2023.

photo LISER
Presentation of «The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics», May 15, 2023, at 2nd LUX-ERC WORKSHOP.

photo Cracow
Invited presentation at the University of Cracow on «Copernican revolution in economy» and on "the rational universe" May 24-26, 2023, at the World Copernican Congress, organized for the the 550th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus.

photo geneve
Presentation at the CEPR Economic History Annual Symposium 2023 of « Catholic Censorship and the Demise of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Italy » June 10, 2023. (photo: thanking Steve Broadberry for a long career at the head of the economic history program of CEPR)

photo dole
Invited presentation by Mara Vitale at the University of Franche-Comté on «Dole dans le réseau des universités princières d’Europe au XV siècle" June 23, 2023, at the conference on "Colloque – L’université de Dole et les fondations princières en Europe au XVe siècle"

photo Pittsburgh EHA
Presentation at the Economic History Association (Pittsburgh PA) of «The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics» September 10, 2023. (photo credit: Matthew Curtis)

photo AMSE
Presentation at the Aix-Marseille Economy-History seminar of «Seeds of Knowledge: Premodern Scholarship, Academic Fields, and European Growth» September 20, 2023. (photo credit: Cecilia García Peñalosa)

photo Alcazar Marseille
Round table at the festival Allez-Savoir (EHESS) on «Le monde universtaire préindustriel et le développement de l'Europe» September 21, 2023.

photo Brown econ dept
Presentation at the Brown's seminar "Development, Institutions, and Political Economy Seminars" of «The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics» October 4, 2023.

photo Harvard Jo Henrich
Presentation of "64,000 European university professors and academicians: human capital, mobility, families,and religion from 1000CE to 1800CE" at Harvard's workshop on "Kinship, Historical Psychology and European Medieval Development" October 6-7, 2023.

photo Harvard Jo Henrich
Presentation of "Louvain Scholars on the Move" (with Mara Vitale) at Lectio's conference "Innovationes Lovanienses, Crossroads of Knowledge Transfer between Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Renaissance" in Leuven, December 6-8, 2023. (photo credit: Mara Vitale)

photo Harvard Jo Henrich
Presentation of «Seeds of Knowledge: Premodern Scholarship, Academic Fields, and European Growth» at the CEPR Symposium in Paris. December 9, 2023. (photo credit: CEPR)

Project application texts (unsuccessful and successful)

I think it can be useful for potential applicants to the ERC to show the various stages of my project with a summary evaluation by the panel. By sharing the summary evaluations, I do not want expectations of uniform treatment to be formed: one should know that the discussion in the panel contributes a lot to the final grade and decision to fund, and all this dynamic cannot always be transferred in written comments. A different panel can take a different view (as you will see), and what helped the proposal get funded might not be what will help some other proposal.

pdf Part B1 in 2016

pdf Part B2 in 2016

Evaluation 2016

pdf Part B1 in 2017

pdf Part B2 in 2017

Evaluation 2017

pdf Part B1 in 2018

pdf Part B2 in 2018

Evaluation 2018

pdf Part B1 in 2019

pdf Part B2 in 2019

Evaluation 2019

Pilots to study feasibility

Is it feasible to build a database of members of knowledge institutions before 1800 in Europe ? Two "pilot" studies have been carried out, testing the best case (well documented universities and academies in Germany and The Netherlands), and the worst case (university with little existing information in France, Aix-en-Provence). In the first study we collected vital dates and activity periods for 10k scholars using the information offered by Dutch and German universities. In the second study, we consider a university that has neither a ready-to-use website nor published biographies of their professors. Here, we combine knowledge from books written on their history and published cartularia with local biographical dictionaries. Starting from none, we identified 476 scholars at this university, attesting to the feasibility of the data collection effort.

These two studies also carry a message on their own.

Leaders and Laggards in Life Expectancy among European Scholars from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Century, Demography 58, 111–135 [with R. Stelter and M. Myrskylä]

abstract abstract | pdf article | appendix appendix | slides slides | homepage Stelter | homepage Myrskylä

A la découverte des professeurs de l’ancienne université d’Aix, depuis ses origines à 1793, Annales du Midi, 131(307-308), 379-402 [avec A. Fabre]

abstract abstract | pdf article | appendix appendix | data data | blog blog | photo map | homepage Fabre

Prequels

The first one looks at apprenticeship, how it is related to knowledge diffusion in a Malthusian growth model, and why Europe developed specific bottom-up apprenticeship institutions. The second paper builds a large sample of famous people, studies their longevity, and defends the view that human capital might have been key in triggering the take-off of the West.

Clans, Guilds, and Markets: Apprenticeship Institutions and Growth in the Pre-Industrial Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133, 1-70, 2018 [with M. Doepke and J. Mokyr]

teaser teaser | abstract abstract | pdf article | appendix appendix | data data | slides slides | blog blog | bibtex citation | homepage Doepke | homepage Mokyr

The Longevity of Famous People from Hammurabi to Einstein, Journal of Economic Growth, 20, 263–303, 2015 [with O. Licandro]

teaser teaser | abstract abstract | pdf article | appendix appendix | slides slides | data data | blog blog | blog blog | photo photo | bibtex citation | homepage Licandro