Classicism and Modern Growth: The Shadow of the Sages
研究历史中国对古代智慧的崇拜如何阻碍了19世纪中叶后的工业化进程，发现圣贤庙数量多的地区现代学习受抑制，工业化更慢，凸显文化企业家精神对经济增长的作用。
This paper examines how the worship of ancient wisdom affects economic progress in historical China, where the learned class embraced classical wisdom for millennia but encountered the shock of Western industrial influence in the mid-nineteenth century. Using the number of sage temples to measure the strength of classical worship in 269 prefectures, I find that classical worship discouraged intellectuals from appreciating modern learning and thus inhibited industrialization between 1858 and 1927. By contrast, industrialization grew faster in regions less constrained by classicism. This finding implies the importance of cultural entrepreneurship, or the lack thereof, in shaping modern economic growth. “The humor of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning.” —David Hume (1754, p. 464).