{"title":"Economically relevant human capital or multi-purpose consumption good? Book ownership in pre-modern Württemberg","authors":"Sheilagh Ogilvie , Jeremy Edwards , Markus Küpker","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2021.101418","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We investigate books as an indicator of human capital using extraordinary, individual-level data on book ownership and signature literacy for a population of German women and men between 1610 and 1900. Although book ownership was very high from an early date, it was associated with signature literacy, gender, urbanization, and wealth in ways inconsistent with its having registered economically relevant human capital. The books people owned were overwhelmingly religious, as elsewhere in pre-modern Europe. People consumed books for multifarious purposes, many of them non-economic. In this pre-modern economy, books were not a good indicator of economically relevant human capital for the population at large, which creates doubt about their use for this purpose more generally.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.eeh.2021.101418","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Explorations in Economic History","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498321000401","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
We investigate books as an indicator of human capital using extraordinary, individual-level data on book ownership and signature literacy for a population of German women and men between 1610 and 1900. Although book ownership was very high from an early date, it was associated with signature literacy, gender, urbanization, and wealth in ways inconsistent with its having registered economically relevant human capital. The books people owned were overwhelmingly religious, as elsewhere in pre-modern Europe. People consumed books for multifarious purposes, many of them non-economic. In this pre-modern economy, books were not a good indicator of economically relevant human capital for the population at large, which creates doubt about their use for this purpose more generally.
期刊介绍：
Explorations in Economic History provides broad coverage of the application of economic analysis to historical episodes. The journal has a tradition of innovative applications of theory and quantitative techniques, and it explores all aspects of economic change, all historical periods, all geographical locations, and all political and social systems. The journal includes papers by economists, economic historians, demographers, geographers, and sociologists. Explorations in Economic History is the only journal where you will find "Essays in Exploration." This unique department alerts economic historians to the potential in a new area of research, surveying the recent literature and then identifying the most promising issues to pursue.
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