Details
- Supervisors
- Faculty
- Degree label
- Abstract
- Introduction: Universities are a purely Western phenomenon. Their role in the systematization of knowledge has been central. They favoured UTHC accumulation through the creation of a knowledgeable elite, who is suspected to have contributed to the outbreak of the so-called Great Divergence between the East and the West of the world. However, the Industrial Revolution originated as a geographically limited event and only thereafter its spillovers spread all over the world. Research question: This research work aims to build a theory to read the interplay between UTHC and long-run economic growth. On top of this, the model serves as a way to assess the specific cross-country differences in the pre-industrial times. Besides, it aims to shed light on the reasons that pushed some specific regions in Europe to become epicentres of the Industrial Revolutions. Methodology: The model is composed of two overlapping generations. Agents must make an occupational choice between two sectors: the academic and the non-academic one. Depending on the sector they choose, agents undergo different human capital transmission mechanisms. Academic workers affect production using two channels. On the one hand, through their human capital supplies and on the other through an externality on TFP. A quantitative implementation of the model is also included. To do it, country-level data for Italy, Spain, England (then Great Britain), France and the Netherlands are used, thereby adopting an intra-European comparative perspective. Results: The theory is able to account for several fundamental features of both continental Europe (Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands) and the UK. However, the model can only partially describe the turning point of the Industrial Revolution for the British economy.