Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/253740 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
EHES Working Paper No. 226
Publisher: 
European Historical Economics Society (EHES), s.l.
Abstract: 
Most creatives acquire professional talents by learning from others, but in most settings it is difficult to estimate the existence of long-term effects. This paper explores the transmission of skills over a period of more than seven centuries by focusing on the case of music composers. We ask the question: how does a composer's quality influence the quality of the composers he or she teaches? Our analysis builds on a unique dataset of 17,433 composers from around the world since the fourteenth century. By comparing actual teacher-student pairs with plausible counterfactual pairs and by using a two-stage framework, we show a strong effect of quality transmission. Moreover, we find quality transmission persists across multiple generations: from teacher to student, and subsequently to student's student and so on. Our results provide new insights on drivers of creativity over the very long term, as well as the influence of teachers on students' achievements.
Subjects: 
creativity
transmission of ideas
music history
teacher influence
JEL: 
I21
J24
N30
O31
Z11
D31
D72
H20
N43
N93
P48
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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