We draw on quantitative and descriptive data from Robert Campbell’s widely cited manual for prospective apprentices, The London Tradesman (1747), to demonstrate the responsiveness of apprenticeship in mid-eighteenth century London to market forces of supply and demand. We regress...

This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capital and on industrialization, in the context of Britain’s Industrial Revolution. It shows that wrights, a group of highly skilled mechanical craftsmen, who specialized in water-powered machinery in...

This book provides a unique historical perspective on expectations in economic theory, and applications of expectations models in economic history. Based on papers presented at the 2017 Thomas Guggenheim Conference, it brings together the work of economists, historians of economics, and economic...