Economic growth before the Industrial Revolution: Rural production and guilds in the European Little Divergence

This paper explains how England became a high-income economy from the 15th to 18th centuries. The appropriate level of natural land suitability in the northern region of England before the Industrial Revolution was pivotal in weakening guilds’ power and the diffusion of rural manufacturing. Unlike other European countries, those elements turned into a more efficient allocation of capital between cities and the rural areas and a more efficient shift of labor time from agriculture to manufacturing in the countryside, resulting in a higher income per capita by 1750.