Chiara Zanardello

Chiara Zanardello

Research Fellow

Working Papers

Early Modern Academies, Universities, and Economic Growth LIDAM Discussion Paper - 2024/12

Abstract. Knowledge is central to modern economic growth, but what role did it play in the past? This paper studies whether Early Modern academies, research-oriented institutions that spread across Europe between 1650 and 1800, were associated with long-run growth. Using novel data on individual scholars, I show that academy creation was followed by higher urban population growth over the long run. This pattern is driven mainly by scientific academies, while literary academies show little evidence of comparable effects. Complementary analyses suggest that scientific academies were also linked to short-run positive spillovers to nearby cities and to improvements in local university quality. Overall, these findings provide new pan-European evidence consistent with scientific academies being part of Europe’s long-run development.

Flora, Cosmos, Salvatio: Pre-modern Academic Institutions and the Spread of Ideas (with David de la Croix, and Rossana Scebba) CEPR Discussion paper DP20569

Abstract. While good ideas can emerge anywhere, it takes a community to develop and disseminate them. In premodern Europe (1084-1793), there were approximately 200 universities and 150 academies of sciences, home to thousands of scholars from the Middle Ages to the First Industrial Revolution. By inferring co-presence from institutional affiliations, we simulate how ideas would spread from a scholar to another across the European academic network. We find that the implied exposure patterns align with observed urban developments: examples include botanic gardens, astronomical observatories, and Protestantism. Scholars’ mobility and multiple affiliations sustain the diffusion, and counterfactual simulations underscore the bridging role played by scientific academies. We also show that the spread of ideas through the affiliation network was locally fragile but globally robust, pointing towards academia as being a connective infrastructure underlying early European development.

You can also read our VOX-EU column

The Geography of European Knowledge: 1000-1800 HAL Working Paper 05850532

Abstract. Between 1000 and 1800, the set of European scholars’ birthplaces expanded geographically, even as their distribution became more concentrated among the leading birthplaces. At the same time, scholars’ workplaces remained much more concentrated in a smaller number of cities, which is consistent with substantial lifetime mobility into academic institutions. Unlike the distribution of scholars’ origins, the urban rank–size distribution remained relatively stable. I also show a strong correlation between the number of academic institutions and a higher concentration of the scholars’ birthplace distribution, while no comparable relationship appears for urban population.  

Selected Work in Progress

Counting Houses: Mapping Late Medieval Populations using the DOMUS Model (with Christian Vedel)

How sustainable is the innovation process? (with Ludovic Maisonneuve and Maxime Derex)

Publications

Doctoral Dissertation

Human Capital and Knowledge Networks - Market Forces, Scientific Academies, and the Spread of Ideas in Early Modern Europe

Data papers

RETE is a collection of data papers, summarizing information on the scholars who taught at premodern European universities or were members of scientific academies. The period covered goes from the emergence of the first universities (1000CE) to the eve of the Industrial Revolution (1800CE).