According to Professor Jeremiah Dittmar of the London School of Economics, writing in 2011, European cities which adopted the printing press experienced 60% higher economic growth than those which didn’t buy into the technology from 1450 to 1600. Ironically, in the context of this article, the printing press itself was monopolistic as the knowledge of materials was quasi-proprietary:

Related publications

‘Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of The Printing Press’, Jeremiah Dittmar, The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2011) 126 (3): 1133-1172

http://bit.ly/2rv5Ks0

Related article

‘Information technology and economic change: the impact of the printing press’, Jeremiah Dittmar, Vox article, 11 February 2011

http://voxeu.org/article/information-technology-and-economic-change-impact-printing-press

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