Economic growth before the Industrial Revolution: Rural production and guilds in the European Little Divergence
Mauro Rota and
Luca Spinesi
Economic Modelling, 2024, vol. 130, issue C
Abstract:
This paper explains how England became a high-income economy from the 15th to 18th centuries. The appropriate level of natural land suitability in the northern region of England before the Industrial Revolution was pivotal in weakening guilds’ power and the diffusion of rural manufacturing. Unlike other European countries, those elements turned into a more efficient allocation of capital between cities and the rural areas and a more efficient shift of labor time from agriculture to manufacturing in the countryside, resulting in a higher income per capita by 1750.
Keywords: High-wage economy; Pre-industrial economy; Little divergence; Rural manufacturing; Land suitability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N1 N13 O11 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999323004029
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:130:y:2024:i:c:s0264999323004029
DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2023.106590
Access Statistics for this article
Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly
More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).