Seeds of knowledge: Premodern scholarship, academic fields, and European growth

Academic human capital is widely believed to be important for economic growth, both historically and today. However, different fields of knowledge – such as theology, law, or science – are not equally important. Using a novel database of premodern European academics (1000–1800), we apply machine learning to classify scholars’ fields based on publication titles. We compare these constructed fields to scholars’ teaching disciplines and trace how their shares evolved, highlighting the Humanistic Revolution, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment. As an application, we measure the historical relationship between scholarly output and economic growth. We find that an increase in scholarly output equivalent to a thousand minor scholars is associated with a 20.56% higher income per capita in the scholars’ regions of birth by 1900. Furthermore, regions with a higher share of scholars in science and botany show stronger income growth. To address endogeneity, we instrument scholarly activity using exogenous variation from forced migration. We propose a mechanism consistent with these findings: scholars foster human capital accumulation among their fellow natives.