Re-examination of the role of guilds in the early modern European economy.

Acknowledgements; List of contributors; Introduction: guilds, innovation, and the European economy, 1400-1800 S. R. Epstein and Maarten Prak; 1. Craft guilds, the theory of the firm, and early modern proto-industry Ulrich Pfister; 2. Craft guilds, apprenticeship and technological change in pre-industrial Europe S. R. Epstein; 3. Subcontracting in guild-based export trades, thirteenth-eighteenth centuries Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly; 4. Circulation of skilled labour in late medieval and early modern Central Europe Reinhold Reith; 5. Painters, guilds and the art market during the Dutch Golden Age Maarten Prak; 6. Craft guilds and technological change: the engine loom in the European silk ribbon industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Ulrich Pfister; 7. Guilds, technology and economic change in early modern Venice Francesca Trivellato; 8. Inventing in a world of guilds: silk fabrics in eighteenth-century Lyon Liliane Perez; 9. 'Not to hurt of trade': guilds and innovation in horology and precision instrument making Anthony Turner; 10. Reaching beyond the city wall: London guilds and national regulation, 1500-1700 Ian Anders Gadd and Patrick Wallis; 11. Guilds in decline? London livery companies and the rise of a liberal economy, 1600-1800 Michael Berlin; Index.