When did western cities become the engines of creativity modern theorists envision them to be? We approach this issue by investigating how much elite authors benefited from agglomerating in early modern London. Building a new panel dataset documenting the place of residence and annual publications of 2,026 prolific authors over the period 1482–1800, we conduct longitudinal author-level analyses. Our results suggest agglomeration benefits in London’s knowledge economy reached levels comparable to those documented in modern cities by the late 16th century. Exploring mechanisms, we find that moving to London improved opportunities for collaboration and, relatedly, the quality of books produced. We find similar agglomeration economies (and mechanisms) in the towns leading Britain’s industrial revolution in the 18th century (but not before).

中文翻译：

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近代早期英国的集聚与创造力


西方城市何时成为现代理论家设想的创造力引擎？我们通过调查近代早期伦敦的精英作者从集聚中受益多少来解决这个问题。构建一个新的面板数据集，记录 2,026 年至 1482 年间多产作者的居住地和年度出版物，我们进行了纵向作者级别的分析。我们的结果表明，到 16 世纪后期，伦敦知识经济的集聚效益达到了与现代城市记录相当的水平。通过探索机制，我们发现搬到伦敦改善了合作机会，相应地，提高了出版书籍的质量。我们在 18 世纪引领英国工业革命的城镇中发现了类似的集聚经济（和机制）（但在此之前没有）。