Origins of the knowledge economy: Higher education and Scandinavia’s economic development

While there is much theoretical and empirical literature examining the role of education in long-term growth, less understood is how different types of education — and the specialisation of skills implicit in higher education — shape development.

The twin purposes of this project are to:
1) examine the role of higher education in Scandinavia’s industrialisation and long-term economic development from the nineteenth century onwards
2) develop and apply new techniques for the measurement of human capital (education) and the analysis of its effects.

I employ two sets of novel Scandinavian source material: grade lists, which track student performance in high school and university; and graduate biographies, which provide details of students’ background, education and post-study careers.

My dissertation will comprise a collection of four articles which build and apply a new skills-based measure of human capital to examine different aspects of the role of higher education in Scandinavian industrialisation.

To what extent did changes in the provision of higher education increase access to education beyond a small elite in society? How did changes in the provision of and access to higher education influence Scandinavia's development in the lead-up to and during industrialisation?