Merchant guilds have been portrayed as "social networks" that generated beneficial "social capital" by sustaining shared norms, effectively transmitting information, and successfully undertaking collective action. This social capital, it is claimed, benefited society as a whole by enabling...

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 paper considers how Designers Guild has affected New Zealand’s copyright law, using as its springboard two decisions of the New Zealand Court of Appeal: one before and one shortly after the Supreme Court’s apparent endorsement of the approach to appellate deference that was adopted by...

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 "particularized" trust...

Social mobility is a key element of meritocratic societies. We analyze multigenerational social mobility with a hand-collected yearly Swiss dataset from 1550 to 2019. With our surname-based approach, we measure the Swiss society's overall permeability over more than 450 years. Furthermore, we...

Ogilvie's The European Guilds is a major contribution to economic history and institutional economics. This review essay surveys the main contributions of Guilds, locating it in a long-standing debate over whether craft guilds contributed positively or negatively to economic development in...

What factors affect the diffusion of new economic institutions? This paper examines this question exploiting the introduction of the first regularized patent system which appeared in the Venetian Republic in 1474. We begin by developing a model which links patenting activity of craft guilds with...

What factors affect the diffusion of new economic institutions? This paper examines this question by exploiting the introduction of the first regularized patent system, which appeared in the Venetian Republic in 1474. We begin by developing a model that links patenting activity of craft guilds...

What factors affect the diffusion of new economic institutions? This paper examines this question by exploiting the introduction of the first regularized patent system, which appeared in the Venetian Republic in 1474. We begin by developing a model that links patenting activity of craft guilds...

What factors affect the diffusion of new economic institutions? This paper examines this question exploiting the introduction of the first regularized patent system which appeared in the Venetian Republic in 1474. We begin by developing a model which links patenting activity of craft guilds with...

In this paper, we argue that antecedents of modern corporate social responsibility (CSR) prior to the Industrial Revolution can be referred to as “proto-CSR” to describe a practice that influenced modern CSR, but which is different from its modern counterparts in form and structure. We...

The Late Middle Ages (c.1300–c.1500) saw the development of many of the key economic institutions of the modern unitary nation-state in Europe. After the ‘commercial revolution’ of the thirteenth century, taxes on trade became increasingly significant contributors to government finances,...

"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...

The Late Middle Ages (c.1300–c.1500) saw the development of many of the key economic institutions of the modern unitary nation-state in Europe. After the "commercial revolution" of the thirteenth century, taxes on trade became increasingly significant contributors to government finances, and...

The question of intellectual property for original fashion design has attracted enormous public attention in recent years. As we show in this chapter, the question has a storied past. In the 1930s, as American fashion was coming into its own as a cultural force, designers worried about...

The question of intellectual property for original fashion design has attracted enormous public attention in recent years. As we show in this chapter, the question has a storied past. In the 1930s, as American fashion was coming into its own as a cultural force, designers worried about...

In the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, Western Europe gradually pulled ahead of other world regions in terms of technological creativity, population growth, and income per capita. We argue that superior institutions for the creation and dissemination of productive knowledge...

In the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, Western Europe gradually pulled ahead of other world regions in terms of technological creativity, population growth, and income per capita. We argue that superior institutions for the creation and dissemination of productive knowledge...

In the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, Western Europe gradually pulled ahead of other world regions in terms of technological creativity, population growth, and income per capita. We argue that superior institutions for the creation and dissemination of productive knowledge...

In the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, Western Europe gradually pulled ahead of other world regions in terms of technological creativity, population growth, and income per capita. We argue that superior institutions for the creation and dissemination of productive knowledge...

Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked...

This paper examines & explores the original sociocultural & economic context where musharakah & mudarabah, or shirkat, have been widely practiced in history until the emergence of western style markets & political transformations in the Muslim world. The idealists in Islamic banking and academia...

This study investigates the effect of participative political institutions (PPIs) that emerged in many central European cities from the late 13th century. The empirical analysis of the paper is based on newly compiled long-run data for the existence of different types of PPIs in 104 cities in...