IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0055.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Books do not die: the price of information, Human Capital and the Black Death in the long fourteenth century

Author

Listed:
  • Eltjo Buringh

Abstract

The overall price trend of late-medieval hand-written books was downwards, despite rising demand by a more literate population, causing upward pressure on prices. Gradually, higher writing speeds reduced late-medieval book prices. A lower price of information facilitated schooling and an increase in human capital. The plague’s demographic shock (1348-1351) reduced used book prices to one half or two-thirds of their pre-plague levels, while production costs of new books then rose. Cheaper access to information (used books) in combination with other post-plague trend breaks gave human capital in the Latin West a boost, and laid a foundation for modern economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Eltjo Buringh, 2014. "Books do not die: the price of information, Human Capital and the Black Death in the long fourteenth century," Working Papers 0055, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucg:wpaper:0055
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cgeh.nl/sites/default/files/WorkingPapers/cgehwp55_buringh.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Davide Cantoni & Noam Yuchtman, 2014. "Medieval Universities, Legal Institutions, and the Commercial Revolution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(2), pages 823-887.
    2. Jeremiah E. Dittmar, 2011. "Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of The Printing Press," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1133-1172.
    3. Joerg Baten & Jan Zanden, 2008. "Book production and the onset of modern economic growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 217-235, September.
    4. Edward L. Glaeser & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2004. "Do Institutions Cause Growth?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 271-303, September.
    5. Van Zanden, Jan Luiten, 2009. "The skill premium and the ‘Great Divergence’," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 121-153, April.
    6. Clark, Gregory, 1988. "The cost of capital and medieval agricultural technique," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 265-294, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. de Pleijt, Alexandra M., 2015. "Human capital and long run economic growth : Evidence from the stock of human capital in England, 1300-1900," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 229, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mara P. Squicciarini & Nico Voigtländer, 2015. "Human Capital and Industrialization: Evidence from the Age of Enlightenment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(4), pages 1825-1883.
    2. Rapone, Tancredi, 2022. "Measuring human capital in the united states using copyright title pages, 1790-1870," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113448, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Becker, Sascha O. & Francisco J. Pino & Vidal-Robert, Jordi, 2021. "Freedom of the Press? Catholic Censorship during the Counter-Reformation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1356, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    4. Link, Andreas, 2023. "The Fall of Constantinople and the Rise of the West," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277619, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. de Pleijt, Alexandra M., 2015. "Human capital and long run economic growth : Evidence from the stock of human capital in England, 1300-1900," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 229, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    6. Andreas Link, 2023. "The Fall of Constantinople and the Rise of the West," Working Papers 223, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    7. Jared Rubin, 2014. "Printing and Protestants: An Empirical Test of the Role of Printing in the Reformation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(2), pages 270-286, May.
    8. Binzel, Christine & Link, Andreas & Ramachandran, Rajesh, 2021. "Language, Knowledge, and Growth: Evidence from Early Modern Europe," CEPR Discussion Papers 15454, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Nunn, Nathan, 2014. "Historical Development," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 7, pages 347-402, Elsevier.
    10. Coşgel, Metin M. & Miceli, Thomas J. & Rubin, Jared, 2012. "The political economy of mass printing: Legitimacy and technological change in the Ottoman Empire," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 357-371.
    11. Raffaele Danna & Martina Iori & Andrea Mina, 2022. "A Numerical Revolution: The diffusion of practical mathematics and the growth of pre-modern European economies," LEM Papers Series 2022/18, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    12. Ralph Hippe & Roger Fouquet, 2024. "The Human Capital Transition and the Role of Policy," Springer Books, in: Claude Diebolt & Michael Haupert (ed.), Handbook of Cliometrics, edition 3, pages 411-457, Springer.
    13. Baten, Joerg & Sohn, Kitae, 2013. "Back to the 'normal' level of human-capital driven growth? A note on early numeracy in Korea, China and Japan, 1550 - 1800," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 52, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.
    14. Braunfels, Elias, 2016. "Further Unbundling Institutions," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 13/2016, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    15. Boerner, Lars & Rubin, Jared & Severgnini, Battista, 2021. "A time to print, a time to reform," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    16. Chaney, Eric, 2020. "Modern Library Holdings and Historic City Growth," CEPR Discussion Papers 14686, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Sascha O. Becker & Luigi Pascali, 2019. "Religion, Division of Labor, and Conflict: Anti-semitism in Germany over 600 Years," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(5), pages 1764-1804, May.
    18. Francesco Cinnirella & Alireza Naghavi & Giovanni Prarolo, 2023. "Islam and human capital in historical Spain," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 225-257, June.
    19. Alexander Donges & Jean-Marie Meier & Rui C. Silva, 2023. "The Impact of Institutions on Innovation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 1951-1974, April.
    20. Valero, Anna & Van Reenen, John, 2019. "The economic impact of universities: Evidence from across the globe," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 53-67.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    : hand-written books; human capital; economic growth; black death; books;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucg:wpaper:0055. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Carmichael (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgeuunl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.