Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy
* Book: Epstein, S. A. and Maarten Prak (editors). Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy, 1400–1800. Cambridge, 2008.
URL = https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/87175/frontmatter/9780521887175_frontmatter.htm
Review
Discussion
Nathan Schneider:
"A chapter in the volume: Epstein, S. R. ”Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship, and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe.“ Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3 (September 1998) [1]:
- Argues that guilds were abolished not because they were uncompetitive but because they were abolished by decree, against the common claim that they were rent-seekers that inhibited innovation (684)
- Focuses on craft/manufacturing, not service guilds (685)
- Craft guilds bought and sold bulk products for members, stabilized volatile incomes, cheap credit, bargaining unit, political power. Were often at odds with the wealthy merchant class.
- Minimizes the role of rent-seeking in guilds, emphasizes the avoidance of free-riding on collective benefits. (687) - “Guilds were cost-sharing rather than price-fixing cartels.” (688)
- Criticizes Adam Smith's critique of the apprenticeship system (688-89), necessary to protect the investment costs from masters in the training process
- Questions the evidence that guilds stifled innovation (693)
- The innovations that the guilds promoted were of a skill-enhancing, quality-adding, capital-saving kind, as opposed to later capital-driven innovations (696)
- Success as a system for investment in human capital (701)
- The benefits and mutual monitoring of clustering enterprises in craft districts (701)
- The role of journeyman travel in diffusing innovations (703)
- guilds helped protect the incentives for inventors (703-704) "