Historical national accounting and dating the Great Divergence

By offering a particular interpretation of the new evidence on historical national accounting, Goldstone argues for a return to the Pomeranz (2000) version of the Great Divergence, beginning only after 1800. However, he fails to distinguish between two very different patterns of pre-industrial growth: (1) alternating episodes of growing and shrinking without any long-term trend in per capita income and (2) episodes of growing interspersed by per capita incomes remaining on a plateau, so that per capita GDP trends upwards over the long run. The latter dynamic pattern occurred in Britain and Holland from the mid-fourteenth century, so that Northwest Europe first edged ahead of the Yangzi delta region of China in the eighteenth century

Archaeology · China · Divergence (linguistics · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Geography · Great Divergence · National accounts · Per capita · Per capita income · Sociology · Demography · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Accounting

• Paradoxes of Global History

  Open Access•Francesca Trivellato•Cromohs - Cyber Review of Modern…•2024

  Incluir item

• Agricultural growth in the Yangzi Delta

  Open Access•Runzhuo Zhai•Explorations in Economic History•2026

  Incluir item

• Economic history of early modern Russia

  Margarita Dadykina, Alexei Kraikovski et al.•Cahiers du monde russe•2023

  Incluir item