Matías Cabello: Divided into progress! How Europe's political and religious fragmentation spurred creativity: 1100-1900
Termin |
Donnerstag, 23. Januar 2025, 18.00 - 19.30 Uhr |
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Veranstaltungsart | Workshop/Seminar |
Reihe | Forschungsseminar "Economic History, Growth & Development" |
Einrichtung | Wirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Bereich |
Veranstalter | Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Lars Börner |
Veranstaltungsort | Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Seminarraum I |
Straße | Große Steinstraße 73 |
PLZ/Ort | 06108 Halle (Saale) |
Beschreibung
Abstract:
It has long been argued that Europe’s fragmentation of authority fostered competition for talent and limited the suppression of ideas, thereby enabling artistic, scientific, and economic development. To test this hypothesis, the paper introduces a city-level panel of creativity measures together with measures of political and religious fragmentation from 1100 to 1900. Rooted in medieval history, both kinds of fragmentation are shown to be interconnected and strong predictors of creativity. But through which causal mechanism? Except for the 16th and 17th centuries, when the fragmentation of authority became key in limiting the repression of subversive ideas, the primal mechanism appears to be the pluricentral demand for genius across competing authorities (especially secular ones). Crucially, these authorities founded competing educational institutions that outlived fragmentation itself, thereby significantly stimulating creativity also in the long term.
Presenter: Matías Cabello (MLU)
Webseite | https://iw.wiwi.uni-halle.de/research_seminar/ |
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