Seeds of Knowledge: Premodern Scholarship, Academic Fields, and European Growth

Human capital is an engine of modern economic growth. Using a novel database of premodern European academics (1000-1800), we find that historical scholarship also fostered growth. Combining secondary sources on the history of academia with data from worldwide library catalogs, our dataset measures both the quantity and productivity of scholars. We find that a 10% increase in scholarly output was associated with 1.4% higher income per capita in the region of the scholars' birth in 1900. Next, we use machine learning to group scholars into ten fields of specialization. Income per capita was positively associated with a the share of scholars studying science (including mathematics, physics, and astronomy), botany, and one type of theology (centered around the Bible), but negatively with the share studying law. Only the share of science and botany, however, seem to matter once we look within countries. Finally, we propose a mechanism consistent with the empirical evidence: scholars encourage their compatriots to accumulate human capital.