Journal of Economic Perspectives
ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)
Seven Centuries of European Economic Growth and Decline
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 29,
no. 4, Fall 2015
(pp. 227–44)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
This paper investigates very long-run preindustrial economic development. New annual GDP per capita data for six European countries over the last seven hundred years paint a clearer picture of the history of European economic development. We confirm that sustained growth has been a recent phenomenon, but reject the argument that there was no long-run growth in living standards before the Industrial Revolution. Instead, the evidence demonstrates the existence of numerous periods of economic growth before the nineteenth century—periods of unsustained, but raising GDP per capita. We also show that many of the economies experienced substantial economic decline. Thus, rather than being stagnant, pre-nineteenth century European economies experienced a great deal of change. Finally, we offer some evidence that, from the nineteenth century, these economies increased the likelihood of being in a phase of economic growth and reduced the risk of being in a phase of economic decline.Citation
Fouquet, Roger, and Stephen Broadberry. 2015. "Seven Centuries of European Economic Growth and Decline." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29 (4): 227–44. DOI: 10.1257/jep.29.4.227Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- E23 Macroeconomics: Production
- I31 General Welfare; Well-Being
- N13 Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations: Europe: Pre-1913
- N14 Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations: Europe: 1913-
- N33 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913
- N34 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: 1913-
- O47 Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
would have been more helpful, though, if it had presented some numbers to back up its claims rather than 1 simple chart.
A comparison of the numbers the authors do present in an
online database with the numbers presented in Maddison 2003
reveal no great differences on a century time scale. Thus it is
really hard to see how they have upset the claim of Hansen
and Prescott that "the sustained growth has existed for at most
the past two centuries, while the millennia prior have been
characterized by stagnation with no permanent growth in living
standards".