Was the Industrial Revolution censored in Austria before 1848? Institutional Change and Useful Human Capital in the Wake of the 1848 Revolutions

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• Tomas Cvrcek (University College London)
• Wednesday 14 May 2025, 16:00-17:30
• Small Lecture Theatre (SLT), Department of Geography and on Teams.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Aleksandra Dul.

Exploiting the 1848 revolution in the Austrian Empire, I study how a sudden institutional change impacts economic development. In contrast to much existing research, which focuses on the rule of law and the security of property rights, I argue that the main impact occurred through the expansion of the upper-tail useful human capital (Mokyr, 2005) following the revolution. While the revolution was defeated, important liberalizing reforms persisted in the areas of (i) the press, (ii) technical education and (iii) knowledge-promoting voluntary associations – the information space, for short. Pushing back against the existing consensus that the revolution had no discernible impact on the empire’s economic development, I combine newly collected data on the pre-1848 and post-1848 information space with data on the use and location of steam engines in 1841–1863 to establish the causal link between the post-1848 reforms and the diffusion of this important industrial technology.

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This talk is part of the Quantitative History Seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• Department of Geography
• Economic and Social History Seminars
• Quantitative History Seminar
• Small Lecture Theatre (SLT), Department of Geography and on Teams
• history

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