This paper examines the importance of social and geographical networks in structuring entry into skilled occupations in premodern London. Using newly digitised records of those beginning an apprenticeship in London between 1600 and 1749, we find little evidence that networks strongly shaped...

"The subject of apprenticeship, one of the more enduring of all economic arrangements, has received more attention from economic historians and the economics profession at large in recent years. Yet, compared, say, with issues such as the economics of slave labor or the rise of formal human...