The Impact Of The Black Death On The Adoption Of The Printing Press

Abstract

We leverage plausibly exogenous variation in mortality from the Black Death (1347-52) across European cities to estimate the causal impact of market size on early print adoption. Using the universe of data from the Universal Short Title Catalogue we create a database linking early European printed material to historical city populations. We find that cities whose populations were more heavily impacted by the Black Death were less likely to be early adopters of the press and printed fewer unique book editions. We also provide evidence that beyond own-city mortality there were also spatial spillovers from the Black Death shock.

Keywords: Black Death, Printing Press, Technical Change, Innovation, Media

JEL Classification: N0, N9, O3, L1, Q5