Seven centuries of European economic growth and decline

Roger Fouquet and Stephen Broadberry

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper investigates very long run pre-industrial 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. First, the paper confirms that sustained growth has been a recent phenomenon, but rejects 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 - unsustained, but raising GDP per capita. It also shows that many of these economies experienced substantial economic decline. Thus, rather than being stagnant, pre-nineteenth century European economies experienced a great deal of change. Finally, it offers 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.

Keywords: history of economic development; economic growth; economic decline (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E01 N13 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Published in Journal of Economic Perspectives, October, 2015, 29(4), pp. 227-244. ISSN: 0895-3309

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/63626/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Seven Centuries of European Economic Growth and Decline (2015)
Working Paper: Seven centuries of European economic growth and decline (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:63626

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