Accounting for the Great Divergence: Recent Findings from Historical National Accounting

Stephen Broadberry

No 15936, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: As a result of recent work on historical national accounting, it is now possible to establish more firmly the timing of the Great Divergence of living standards between Europe and Asia in the eighteenth century. There was a European Little Divergence as Britain and the Netherlands overtook Italy and Spain, and an Asian Little Divergence as Japan overtook China and India. The Great Divergence occurred because Japan grew more slowly than Britain and the Netherlands starting from a lower level, and because of a strong negative growth trend in Qing dynasty China. A growth accounting framework is used to assess the contributions of labour, human and physical capital, land and total factor productivity. In addition to these proximate sources, the roles of institutions and geography are examined as the ultimate sources of the divergent growth patterns.

Keywords: Great divergence; Living standards; Measurement; Explanation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N10 N30 N35 O10 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-evo, nep-gro and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15936 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Accounting for the Great Divergence: Recent findings from historical national accounting (2021)
Working Paper: Accounting for the Great Divergence: Recent findings from historical national accounting (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15936

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15936

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().