Ideas, Technology, and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press

该项目的目的是通过确定活字印刷机的采用如何影响欧洲城市的发展，加深我们对技术在经济增长中的作用的理解。活字印刷机是早期现代信息技术的伟大创新，在历史上与互联网的出现最接近。这个项目将建立和分析一个关于印刷机和印刷媒体传播的数据库。这项工作将记录文艺复兴时期的信息技术革命如何改变了欧洲的经济地理，并促进了现代增长的出现。这项研究将以新的方式将经济、地理和历史学术结合起来——记录从根本上改变了经济生活的技术、思想和制度之间的当地相互作用。该项目的中心目标是：1。1 .编制和散发关于城市一级印刷机的传播和印刷媒体产出组成的新数据库。通过利用历史证据，确定早期采用印刷机所引起的城市增长的幅度。3 .确定印刷机对经济增长的影响程度与与气候和地理位置相关的地理优势的影响以及城市增长的制度决定因素（如相对安全的产权）的影响相比较。生成新的定量数据，记录印刷机如何促进商业实践中数学技能的获得和创新，并确定这些转变如何与城市发展相关联。这项工作将首次展示互联网前的信息技术革命如何改变了欧洲的经济地理。这项研究将产生一个原始数据库，并对欧洲历史上技术、地理和制度作为城市发展决定因素的相对重要性进行评估。经济学家认识到，经济活动高度集中在城市，而思想是经济增长的核心。这项研究将提供有关当地知识生产的数据，将城市增长与区域发展联系起来，并能够评估经济学家所阐述和辩论的相互竞争的增长理论。更广泛的影响：这项工作将产生的数据和结果将帮助研究经济地理学、科学史和城市史的研究人员了解创业、技术、思想和现代经济增长的出现之间的联系。印刷机极大地降低了在城市间传递复杂信息的成本，这使得观察家们预测未来地理位置的重要性将大大降低。但技术也与新的面对面互动以及人力资本积累和技术变革的局部溢出有关。PI期望，确定这些溢出效应是如何运作的，将有助于从过去吸取教训，解决有关现代信息技术影响的当代问题。

The objective of this project is to deepen our understanding of the role of technology in economic growth by determining how the adoption of the movable type printing press impacted city growth in Europe. The movable type printing press was the great innovation in early modern information technology and provides the closest historical parallel to the emergence of the internet. This project will construct and analyze a database on the diffusion of the printing press and print media. This work will document how the information technology revolution of the Renaissance transformed the economic geography of Europe and contributed to the emergence of modern growth. The research will combine economic, geographic, and historic scholarship in new ways - to document local interactions between technology, ideas, and institutions that radically transformed economic life. The central aims of this project are:1. To produce and disseminate a new database on the diffusion of the printing press and the composition of print media output at the city level.2. To determine the magnitude of the increases in city growth that were caused by early adoption of the printing press, by exploiting historical evidence.3. To determine how the magnitude of the printing press effect on growth compares to the effect of geographic advantages associated with climate and location and the impact of institutional determinants of city growth, such as relatively secure property rights.4. To produce new, quantitative data documenting how the printing press fostered the acquisition of mathematical skills and innovations in business practice and to determine how these transformations were associated with city growth.This work will for the first time show how the great pre-internet revolution in information technology transformed the economic geography of Europe. The research will produce an original database and an assessment of the relative importance of technology, geography, and institutions as determinants of city growth in European history. Economists recognize that economic activity is highly concentrated in cities and that ideas are at the heart of growth. This study will produce data on the local production of knowledge, link city growth to regional development, and enable an assessment of competing theories of growth articulated and debated by economists. Broader Impact: This work will produce data and results that will help researchers studying economic geography, the history of science, and urban history understand the connections between entrepreneurship, technology, ideas, and the emergence of modern economic growth. The printing press dramatically reduced the cost of transmitting complex information between cities, leading observers to anticipate a future in which the importance of location was greatly diminished. But the technology was also associated with new face-to-face interactions and with localized spillovers in human capital accumulation and technological change. The PI expects that determining how these spillovers operated will allow lessons to be drawn from the past for contemporary questions concerning the impact of modern information technology.