Apprenticeship and Technological Progress in the Malthusian World

We develop a model of technological progress and knowledge transmission in the Malthusian era. Given low literacy rates, codified knowledge and formal education were much less important than today. Instead, most knowledge was directly acquired from elders. In knowledge-intensive areas, this usually involved formal apprenticeships. We develop a model in which a market for apprenticeship exists and apprentices learn from multiple masters. We characterize the determinants of economic growth in this framework and evaluate the effects of alternative apprenticeship institutions on economic development.