Replication data for: Water mills and human capital accumulation in industrializing Prussia
Description
-- Overview -- This replication package contains the datasets, code, and shapefiles required to reproduce the empirical analysis, tables, and figures for the paper "Water Mills and Human Capital Accumulation in Industrializing Prussia." -- Research Hypothesis -- The study investigates whether water-powered proto-industrialization fostered the accumulation of practical, artisanal human capital in early nineteenth-century Prussia. Testing the generality of the mechanism proposed by Mokyr et al. (2022) for Britain, the paper hypothesizes that the construction, maintenance, and industrial application of water mills created a unique demand for skilled labor (e.g., millwrights, metalworkers) and generated technological spillovers that facilitated early industrial development. -- Data Description and Collection-- The dataset combines historical administrative records with high-resolution geographic data. 1. Historical Census Data: The core economic and demographic variables are derived from Prussian administrative statistics. This includes county-level data on population, religion, education, and specific occupational categories (master craftsmen) from the ifo Prussian Economic History Database (iPEHD) and the 1849 census. 2. Mill Data: The package features newly digitized data on the number and type of mills (water, wind, animal, saw, oil, and fulling mills) for all Prussian counties in 1819, transcribed from Mützell’s New Topographical, Statistical, and Geographical Dictionary of the Prussian State (1825). 3. Geography: Terrain ruggedness and water power potential variables were computed using the MERIT DEM and MERIT Hydro databases at a resolution of 3 arc-seconds (approx. 90 meters). -- Findings and Interpretation -- The analysis employs an Instrumental Variable (IV) strategy, exploiting terrain ruggedness as an exogenous predictor of water mill location. The data shows that: 1. Skill Accumulation: There is a robust, positive causal effect of water mill density in 1819 on the share of skilled master craftsmen in 1849. 2. Population Growth: Water mills were positively associated with population growth during the early industrial phase (1821–1849), a proxy for economic development. 3. Technology Differences: Unlike water mills, wind and animal mills did not yield comparable developmental benefits, highlighting the unique role of hydraulic power in pre-industrial manufacturing. -- Usage -- The package includes R scripts for data construction, regression analysis, and visualization, as well as a Stata script for spatial unit root diagnostics. Users can replicate the main OLS and IV results, robustness checks, and generate the maps used in the paper. An R Project file is included to ensure reproducibility of the computing environment.
Files
Institutions
- Queen's University BelfastNorthern Ireland, Belfast