Engineers and the Knowledge Gap between Andean and Nordic Countries 1850-1939

Rather than exogenous endowments, natural resources can be seen as economically exploitable resources thanks to knowledge improvements. This underscores the need to understand why some natural resource abundant countries are able to develop their own technologies while others are not. We tackle this issue by looking at the evolution of engineering faculties and graduate engineers from 1850 to 1939 in Andean and Nordic countries, two regions where natural resources were critical at the onset of modern economic growth. We find the consolidation of a knowledge gap between Andean and Nordic countries during the First Globalization that was materialized in: a) a drastic difference in the total number of locally trained engineers; b) the role that these engineers played in their respective labor markets. These differences were the result of differences in public support to primary education and migration traditions. Both, in turn, are linked to historical and geographic contingencies.