The road to the Industrial Revolution: hypotheses and conjectures about the medieval origins of the ‘European Miracle’
Jan Luiten van Zanden
Abstract The article uses various ways of measuring the efficiency institutions regulating market exchange, such as interest rates, skill premium, and level integration, to try answer question about quality in different parts Eurasia centuries before ‘Great Divergence’. It appears that Western Europe, from early late medieval period, had a relatively well-developed set institutions. By contrast, South Southeast Asian were much less geared towards well-functioning markets. However, Japan China seventeenth eighteenth developed efficient, resulted high levels commercial exchange. A number hypotheses are then reviewed may help explain European head start dating Middle Ages.
Journal of Global History