This study explores the impact of industrialization on secondary schooling in 19th century France. As a source of exogenous variation in industrialization across the French territory, it takes advantage of the openings and closures of mines which were supervised by the Ministry of Public Works,...

We model a two-region country where value is created through bilateral production between masses and elites (bourgeois and landowners). Industrialization requires the elites to finance schools and the masses to attend them. Schooling raises productivity, particularly for matches between masses...

Our purpose here is to challenge the "big-bang" approach to economic history in which some alleged institutional imposition - a deus machine - is claimed to launch a series of new economic behaviors. This so-called prime mover is then carried forward by the inexorable forces of path dependency...