Seven Centuries of European Economic Growth and Decline

Roger Fouquet and Stephen Broadberry

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2015, vol. 29, issue 4, 227-44

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.

JEL-codes: E23 I31 N13 N14 N33 N34 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.29.4.227
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

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Working Paper: Seven centuries of European economic growth and decline (2015)
Working Paper: Seven centuries of European economic growth and decline (2015)
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