Paper short abstract:

The role of craft guilds has been widely debated in recent decades. Using a large database of empirical evidences, and analysing them with consistent economic reasoning, this paper will challenge prevailing theories and the role guilds played for knowledge transfers in pre-modern times

Paper long abstract:

The role of craft guilds has been widely debated in recent decades. Social and economic historians have argued that craft guilds improved technological transfer, facilitating labour mobility and the circulation of knowledge, giving incentives to innovators and disseminating information across existing geo-political borders.

However, many studies are normally based on normative, rhetorical or scattered court cases on what actually craft guilds did for technological transfer, while detailed analysis on guild activities in a long-term perspective and day-to-day basis are few. Using a large database of empirical evidences from a single case study (a woollen guild industry in northern Italy), and analysing them with consistent economic reasoning, this paper aims to shed new light on the role of institutions as craft guilds in transferring knowledge in pre-modern markets and to highlight the role of economic agents in shaping new spaces.

On the one hand I will investigate indeed the reality of guild activities on this issue, showing the attitudes toward the imposition and, especially, the control of labour mobility. On the other hand I will show how economic agents - especially migrant workers - were able to use their socio-economic networks to create new bounded spaces, which were often in conflict with existing institutional ones. Cross-country European comparisons will help us to challenge prevailing theories about craft guild and the role they played for knowledge transfers in pre-modern times.