Email this article 
RELIGIOUS ROOTS OF BOOK PRODUCTION AND HUMAN CAPITAL DURING (EARLY) MODERN AGE
Abstract
The invention of printing press and the process of book production had an important impact on the entire human action, affecting almost every political, economic, social, religious and philosophical field.
For centuries, the book production was mostly conducted in relation with the Church. And this is just one argument that could explain the contribution of religion and religious movements on accumulation and spreading the culture, stimulating the human capital evolution and the economic growth.
The paper indicates the reasons why the level of book production can be considered an indicator of the human capital evolution. Several references to religion movements, printing and bookselling are also included at that point. The role of Reformation in the development of human capital and long-run economic growth is also emphasized.
In its final part, the article brings some valuable ideas about the positive relationship of book production, literacy, human capital, urbanization and economic growth in Western Europe on the eve of Industrial Revolution. In these terms, it is taken into account a thesis regarding an economic growth scenario for Romanian territories, derived from a case study on religious roots of Romanian book production during (early) Modern Age.
Full text: PDF
Keyword(s)
JEL Codes
References
Bairoch, P., 1988, Cities and Economic Development: from the dawn of history to the present, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Barbu, D., 1996, Letter on sand, Bucharest: Antet.
Becker, G.S., Murphy, K. and Tamura, R., 1990, Human Capital, Fertility, and Economic Growth, Journal of Political Economy 98.
Buringh, E., van Zanden, J. L., 2009, Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a long-term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries, The Journal of Economic History, vol. 69, no. 2.
Cipolla, C. M., 1969, Literacy and Development in the West, Baltimore: Penguin Books.
Deletant, D., 1991, Studies in Romanian History, Bucharest: Enciclopedica Publishing House.
Dimaras, C. T., 1969, La Grèce au temps des Lumières, Genève: Droz.
Clark, P., 2009, European Cities and Towns 400-2000, London: Oxford University Press.
Eisenstein, E. L., 1979, The Printing Press as an Agent 1of Change: Communications and Cultural transformations in early-modern Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Eisenstein, E. L., 2005, The Printing Revolution in early modern Europe, 2nd edition, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ferguson, N., 2011, Civilization: The West and the Rest, Iaşi: Polirom.
Gilmore, M., 1952, The World of Humanism 1453 – 1517 (The Rise of Modern Europe), New York: W. Langer.
Houston, R., 1983, Literacy and Society in the West, 1500-1850, Social History, 8 (3), p. 269-293.
Lucas, R., 2002, Lectures on Economic Growth, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Massa, P., 2006, The Economy in the Fifteenth Century: Preconditions for European Expansion In: A. di Vittorio, ed. 2006, An Economic History of Europe. From expansion to development, Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group.
McCloskey, D., 2010, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics can’t Explain the Modern World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Murgescu, B., 2010, Romania and Europe: the Accumulation of Economic Disparities (1500-2010), Iaşi: Polirom.
Persson, K. G., 1988, Pre-industrial Economic Growth. Social Organization and Technological Progress in Europe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Reis, J., 2005, Economic growth, human capital formation and consumption in Western Europe before 1800, in R. C. Allen, T. Bengtsson and M. Dribe, ed. 2005, Living Standards in the Past, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Steinberg, S.H., 1961, Five Hundred Years of Printing, Bristol: Penguin Books.
Tomescu, M., 1918, The Romanian history of book from the beginning till 1918, Bucharest: Stiintifica Publishing House, 1968.
van Zanden, J. L., 2009, The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution: the European Economy in a global perspective, 1000-1800, Leiden: Brill.
Weber, M., 1948, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London: Talcott Parsons.