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Joel Mokyr on Clans, Corporations, and a Culture of Growth
Brief
Joel Mokyr’s new book Two Paths to Prosperity (co-authored with Gryfe and Tabalini) provides a sweeping, institutional-cultural explanation for long-run differences between Europe and East Asia. Mokyr frames the divergence not as a simple superiority or failure, but as two durable social-organizational equilibria. Europe moved toward nuclear-family-based societies that generated voluntary, non-kin corporations — universities, guilds, self-governing cities, monasteries — which supplied local public goods and created environments where cooperation among non-relatives could flourish. China, by contrast, evolved around extended kin/clan structures that the imperial state often co-opted; those clan networks proved resilient and shaped political and economic outcomes for centuries. Mokyr credits the medieval Catholic Church (and scholars like Jack Goody and Jonathan Schulz) for shaping kinship norms via restrictive marriage rules and by weakening local rival organizations, a process whose cultural effects outlasted many specific institutions.
The conversation links that long-run divergence to later technological and industrial trajectories. Mokyr emphasizes an 'Industrial Enlightenment' in Europe — a growing belief in progress and the application of scientific knowledge to material improvement beginning in the 16th–17th centuries — as crucial to sustained innovation. He uses vivid contrasts (Romans were skilled but lacked a progress mindset; for example, they never developed spectacles) to show why earlier civilizations did not spawn continuous technological revolutions. For Britain specifically, Mokyr rejects simple religious explanations and credits a market-based apprenticeship system for producing superior skilled labor, which he argues was critical to scaling inventions; he points to his JPE work showing regional shifts and to proxy evidence (British soldiers about two inches taller than French soldiers) as indicators of higher early-life welfare and productivity. He also traces a later German ascendancy to deliberate investment in universities and technical schools (Humboldtian reforms and Technische Hochschulen) that married science and industry by the late 19th century. Throughout, Mokyr stresses the persistence of cultural mindsets and the complex, often unintended, historical processes whereby institutions and culture co-evolve.
Why it matters
Joel Mokyr (guest) argues in Two Paths to Prosperity (with Gryfe and Tabalini) that a core divergence between Europe and China from c.1000–2000 was organizational: Europe developed corporations (universities, monasteries, autonomous cities, guilds) that enabled cooperation beyond kin, whereas China increasingly organized local public goods around extended kinship clans.
Key details
- Mokyr attributes important causal forces in Europe to the medieval Catholic Church: aggressive incest/kinship prohibitions and the Church's interest in weakening competing local organizations (and sometimes inheriting property when people died without heirs) — he cites Jack Goody and Jonathan Schulz as influential scholarship.
- Mokyr emphasizes persistence via culture–institution feedback: even when medieval European corporations (e.g., guilds, monasteries) later declined, the cultural mindset produced by nuclear-family organization persisted, with universities being the most enduring corporate form.
- On China, Mokyr says policy shocks (Mao era) tried to erase clan influence but were only partially successful; since Deng-era reforming decades (post-1976) China has absorbed Western institutional ideas — for example, Chinese patenting has 'skyrocketed' in the last 30–40 years, while autonomous universities remain politically controlled.
- Mokyr argues Britain’s early industrial edge came from superior skilled labor produced by a market-based apprenticeship system (unlike continentally regulated guilds). He cites evidence (JPE 2023 with Morgan & Kormac) that British soldiers were on average about two inches taller than French counterparts, a proxy for better childhood nutrition/skills and productivity.
- Mokyr frames the rise of modern growth as tied to an 'Industrial Enlightenment' and a new European belief in progress and applying science to practical problems; he contrasts this with Rome (which lacked an enduring progress mindset — e.g., never inventing spectacles) and credits 19th-century Germany’s investments in research universities and technical schools (Humboldt, Technische Hochschulen) for Germany’s scientific-industrial leadership by 1900.