Book Chapter

Transferring useful knowledge. Quality mechanisms in European apprenticeship

  • Maarten Prak
  • Patrick Wallis

Human capital is central to current debates about the sources of growth and divergence in the premodern economy. Apprenticeship, the key formal arrangement by which occupational skills were transferred in this period, has in the past often been associated with guild monopolies and exclusion, implying a drag on the accumulation of human capital. Several stimulating recent contributions have pointed to apprenticeship as a potentially important explanation for English or European advances in manufacturing and technology in the run up to industrialisation. In this paper, we explore mechanisms that helped improve quality among artisans. We focus on one in particular: the selection of training masters by apprentices.

  • Keywords:
  • Apprenticeship,
  • Human Capital,
  • England,
  • Netherlands,
  • Skill,
  • Artisans,
  • Technology,
  • Guild,
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Maarten Prak

Utrecht University, Netherlands

Patrick Wallis

LSE, London School of Economics - ORCID: 0000-0003-1434-515X

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  • Publication Year: 2023
  • Pages: 177-192
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Transferring useful knowledge. Quality mechanisms in European apprenticeship

Authors

Maarten Prak, Patrick Wallis

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0092-9.11

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

L’economia della conoscenza: innovazione, produttività e crescita economica nei secoli XIII-XVIII / The knowledge economy: innovation, productivity and economic growth, 13th to 18th century

Editors

Giampiero Nigro

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

456

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0092-9

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0091-2

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0092-9

Series Title

Datini Studies in Economic History

Series ISSN

2975-1241

Series E-ISSN

2975-1195

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