Papers by Karine van der Beek
Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, May 1, 2023
Urban Forestry & Urban Greening
Social Science Research Network, 2006
Evidence from the medieval milling industry in Northern France (1150-1250) is used to explore eff... more Evidence from the medieval milling industry in Northern France (1150-1250) is used to explore effects of political structure on rulers' monopolistic gains and investment decisions. Using Salop's (1979) spatial model as a theoretical framework, we show that investment in watermill ...
The Journal of Economic History, Sep 1, 2009
Download a branded Cambridge Journals Online toolbar (for IE 7 only). What is this? ... Add Cambr... more Download a branded Cambridge Journals Online toolbar (for IE 7 only). What is this? ... Add Cambridge Journals Online as a search option in your browser toolbar. What is this? ... The Rise of the Amsterdam Market and Information Exchange: Merchants, Commercial ...
Social Science Research Network, 2007
Recent growth literature overlooks the remarkable economic expansion that occurred in Northwester... more Recent growth literature overlooks the remarkable economic expansion that occurred in Northwestern Europe during the 11 th-13 th centuries and categorizes this period as one of stagnation, explained in part as the outcome of the political environment. In this paper I use evidence on watermill construction in the northern French region of Ponthieu, during the 11 th-12 th centuries, as a case study of the effects of political fragmentation on technology adoption in the feudal economy. I show that watermill construction was significantly more intense in areas where authority was fragmented and landholding was divided between numerous landlords. I explain this by a higher level of competition in the local grain market and by the absence of a market for land and labor. The novelty of my findings is that even in the absence of formal contract enforcing institutions political fragmentation can increase investment rates and generate economic growth.. I. Introduction Investment in productive capital and introduction of new technologies are essential to economic growth and yet, in many economies, today and in the past, existing technologies are not adopted 1. A wide range of explanations has been offered to explain this phenomenon, including those focusing on differences in standards of living, the relative price of capital, social norms as well as institutions and politics 2. In this study I
The Economic History Review, Sep 14, 2009
This article explores the effects of political structure on rulers' monopolistic gains and in... more This article explores the effects of political structure on rulers' monopolistic gains and investment decisions in the context of the medieval milling industry in northern France, 1150–1250. Using Salop's spatial model, this article aims to show that political fragmentation increased investment in watermill construction because it reduced the capacity of rulers to limit competition from neighbouring mills. The calculations demonstrate that competition significantly reduced rulers' income from watermills and that the construction of more than 50 per cent of these mills cannot be economically ‘justified’ unless rulers' profit maximization over joint production is considered, and revenues from additional labour allocated to wheat production is included.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Nov 27, 2021
This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capi... more This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capital and industrialization. We argue that mechanical skills and competence were a main determinant of the location of industry on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. It concentrates on the case of millwrights, eighteenth century specialists in advanced carpentry and hydraulic machinery. Millwrights were a key part of the upper-tail of the distribution of mechanical abilities. Their emergence was determined by the early adoption of watermills in the Middle Ages as recorded in the Domesday Book survey (1086). Their location displays considerable persistence.
The Journal of Economic History, Feb 21, 2017
We use annual information on apprenticeships in England between 1710-1805 to estimate the dynamic... more We use annual information on apprenticeships in England between 1710-1805 to estimate the dynamic supply-responsiveness in this market in the presence of the increasingly powerful technological shocks as the Industrial Revolution proceeded apace. Using both an Instrumental Variable method and a dynamic Vector Autoregression framework (VAR) system to identify the long-run lends support to the view that Britain's apprenticeship institution was the source of its advantage in skilled mechanical labor, so critical to its economic success. T he attempt to explain the timing and location of the British Industrial Revolution has attracted many controversies among economic historians (Mokyr 1999; Allen 2009). The issue of British leadership over Continental countries has been of special interest and has focused on institutions, resources, colonial advantage, and culture. 1 Among the numerous explanations, the role of human capital and its relationship with technological change has received growing attention in the last decade, much due to developments in economic growth models. The role of human capital in many recent growth models is a central one (e.g., Galor 2011; Glaeser et al. 2004). These models usually assume the existence of a dynamic relationship between technological change and human capital in which human capital both advances technological change and results from it because of an increase in the demand of employers for skilled workers, needed to implement and maintain the new technologies. In
Explorations in Economic History, 2016
This paper provides a broad-based empirical analysis of the effects of technological change on sk... more This paper provides a broad-based empirical analysis of the effects of technological change on skill acquisition in the years that led to the British Industrial Revolution. Based on a unique set of data on apprenticeship between 1710 and 1772, the formal system for skill acquisition in this period, we show that both the number of apprentices and their share in the cohort of the fifteen year-olds-increased in response to inventions and that the strongest response was in the highly skilled mechanical trades. These results suggest that technological changes in this period were skill biased mainly due to the expansion of the machinery sector they induced.
The Economic Journal
This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capi... more This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capital and industrialisation. We argue that mechanical skills and competence were a main determinant of the location of industry on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. It concentrates on the case of millwrights, eighteenth-century specialists in advanced carpentry and hydraulic machinery. Millwrights were a key part of the upper tail of the distribution of mechanical abilities. Their emergence was determined by the early adoption of watermills in the Middle Ages as recorded in the Domesday Book survey (1086). Their location displays considerable persistence.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
This paper provides the first broad-based empirical analysis of the effects of technological chan... more This paper provides the first broad-based empirical analysis of the effects of technological change on skill acquisition in the years that led to the British Industrial Revolution. Based on a unique set of evidence on apprenticeship between 1710 and 1772, the formal system for skill acquisition in this period, we find that the number of apprentices increased in response to innovations and that the strongest response to innovations was in the highly skilled mechanical trades. These results suggest that technological changes in this period were skill biased and that skill-complementarity operated through the expansion of the machinery sector.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
In his seminal book, The Enlightened Economy, Joel Mokyr argued that "in Britain the high qu... more In his seminal book, The Enlightened Economy, Joel Mokyr argued that "in Britain the high quality of workmanship available to support innovation, local and imported, helped create the Industrial Revolution". By these, Mokyr refers to "the top 3-5 percent of the labor force in terms of skills: engineers, mechanics, millwrights, chemists, clock- and instrument makers, skilled carpenters and metal workers, wheelwrights, and similar workmen." This article provides empirical evidence from different sources that supports Mokyr's claim. Mainly, I use evidence on apprenticeship that covers all England between 1710 and 1770 and show that in the eighteenth century the most relevant occupation within this group of "high-quality workmen" was the wright, a workmen who "Erects and installs, in place of use, machinery and other mechanical equipment". I find that the share of apprentices bind to wrights, carpenters, joiners and turners increased throughout the eighteenth century. These findings indicate that this was the relevant group of workmen in a period of mechanization and technological change.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
We draw on quantitative and descriptive data from Robert Campbell's widely cited manual for prosp... more We draw on quantitative and descriptive data from Robert Campbell's widely cited manual for prospective apprentices, The London Tradesman (1747), to demonstrate the responsiveness of apprenticeship in mid-eighteenth century London to market forces of supply and demand. We regress apprenticeship premiums on journeymen's wages, set up costs and a selection of employment conditions and requirements across 178 trades, and find a significant elasticity of 0.4 with respect to wages and 0.25 with respect to setup costs. We interpret this as supporting an economic model that views premiums as bounded from above by the expected benefits of acquiring the skills of the trade (Lane, 1996); bounded from below by the expected net training costs to the master, taking into account the possibility of the apprentice terminating his service prematurely (Wallis, 2008); and reflecting the relative bargaining power of master and parent. This supports the thesis that apprenticeship played an important role in adapting the English workforce to the skill requirements of the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, by demonstrating the internal and external consistency of Campbell's observations, our findings support their further use as a unique, invaluable source of detailed, trade-specific wage data from the early years of the Industrial Revolution.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019
This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capi... more This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capital and industrialization, in the context of Britain's Industrial Revolution. We demonstrate that millwrights, eighteenth century specialists in advanced carpentry and hydraulic machinery, evolved following the diffusion of watermills, and are recorded in the Domesday Book survey (1086). Our results suggest that their availability was a major factor in determining the persistence of English industrial location from the thirteenth century to the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, in locations that adopted watermills in the Middle Ages, we show that the availability of physical infrastructure and of highly skilled wrights jointly determined the location of English industry from the end of the thirteenth century to the eve of the Industrial Revolution.
This paper revisits the debate over whether the technological changes in eighteenth-century Engla... more This paper revisits the debate over whether the technological changes in eighteenth-century England were complements to skilled workers, or whether they were substitutes, as believed by many. Using an exceptional and comprehensive set of evidence from tax records on apprenticeship indentures from all over Great Britain between 1710 and 1772 I find evidence consistent with the technology-skill complementarity view. Thus, the relative number of new apprentices in the mechanical occupations was increasing throughout the eighteenth century and since the 1730s’, a period of accelerated technological changes, the relative tuition paid to be apprenticed to these occupations was increasing as well. Furthermore, a breakdown of the occupations to categories of skill level reveals that the relative number of new apprentices in skilled occupation was continuously increasing. Interestingly, these trends are shown to have taken place in the regions where technological changes had an impact and ar...
In his seminal book, The Enlightened Economy, Joel Mokyr argued that "in Britain the high qu... more In his seminal book, The Enlightened Economy, Joel Mokyr argued that "in Britain the high quality of workmanship available to support innovation, local and imported, helped create the Industrial Revolution". By these, Mokyr refers to "the top 3-5 percent of the labor force in terms of skills: engineers, mechanics, millwrights, chemists, clock- and instrument makers, skilled carpenters and metal workers, wheelwrights, and similar workmen." This article provides empirical evidence from different sources that supports Mokyr's claim. Mainly, I use evidence on apprenticeship that covers all England between 1710 and 1770 and show that in the eighteenth century the most relevant occupation within this group of "high-quality workmen" was the wright, a workmen who "Erects and installs, in place of use, machinery and other mechanical equipment". I find that the share of apprentices bind to wrights, carpenters, joiners and turners increased throughou...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This paper provides the first broad-based empirical evidence that technological change during the... more This paper provides the first broad-based empirical evidence that technological change during the British Industrial Revolution was skill-complementary. Based on an analysis of a unique set of evidence on the occupational distribution of apprenticeship---the formal system for skill acquisition---between 1710 and 1772, we show that both the number of apprentices and their share increased in response to technological innovation. We also find that innovations had a differential effect on the various occupations and that the strongest response to innovation was in the highly skilled mechanical trades. This result suggests that the complementarity of technological change with skilled workers operated through an expansion in the machinery segment in the economy.
Economic History Review, 68, 4 (2015), pp. 1177–1202
We draw on quantitative and descriptive data from Robert Campbell’s widely cited manual for prosp... more We draw on quantitative and descriptive data from Robert Campbell’s widely cited manual for prospective apprentices, The London Tradesman (1747) to demonstrate through regression analysis the responsiveness of apprenticeship in mid-eighteenth century London to market forces of supply and demand, and thus its ability to play a useful role in efficiently adapting the English workforce to the changing skill requirements of the Industrial Revolution. We show that variation across trades in apprenticeship premiums were shaped by economic conditions: bounded from above by the expected benefits to the apprentice of acquiring the skills of the trade (Lane, 1996); bounded from below by the expected net training costs to the master, taking into account the delay before the apprentice becomes reasonably productive and the positive probability of the apprentice leaving prematurely (Wallis, 2008); and reflecting the relative bargaining power of master and parent. In attesting to the internal and external consistency of Campbell’s observations, our findings support their further use as a unique, invaluable source of detailed, trade-specific wage data from the early years of the Industrial Revolution.
Uploads
Papers by Karine van der Beek