This paper presents first results from a project to reconstitute the demographic behavior of three villages in Württemberg (southern Germany) from the mid-sixteenth to the early twentieth century. Using high-quality registers of births, deaths, and marriages, and unusual ancillary sources, we...

This article presents an analysis of occupational structure, a key component of the ‘Little Divergence’, in an eastern‐central European economy under the second serfdom, using data on 6,983 Bohemian villages in 1654. Non‐agricultural activity was lower than in western Europe, but varied...

This paper analyzes an early modern German economy to test alternative theories about guilds. It finds little evidence to support recent hypotheses arguing that guilds corrected market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. But it finds that guilds were social networks...

This chapter surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth and points out weaknesses in a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in...

"Cambridge Studies in Economic History comprises stimulating and accessible economic history which actively builds bridges to other disciplines. Books in the series will illuminate why the issues they address are important and interesting, place their findings in a comparative context, and...

Simple Malthusian models remain an important tool for understanding pre-modern demographic systems and their connection to the economy. But most recent literature has lost sight of the institutional context for demographic behavior that lay at the heart of Malthus's own analysis. This paper...

Institutions – the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions – are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This paper shows...

Guilds are social scientists’ favoured historical example of institutions generating a ‘social capital’ of trust that benefited entire economies. This article considers this view in the light of empirical findings for early modern Europe. It draws the distinction between a...