Maddison‐style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: A new 2023 update

Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden

Journal of Economic Surveys, 2025, vol. 39, issue 2, 631-671

Abstract: This paper surveys the literature on historical national accounting, discusses the importance of relative income benchmarks for, in particular, historical income estimates, and presents an update of long run global economic development with a new version of the Maddison Project Database (MPD). As benchmarks are central to methodologies for global income comparisons over time, and therefore vital to MPD, we analyze the consequences and biases of three benchmarks, the 1990 benchmark, the 2011 benchmark and the multiple benchmark method following the recent Penn World Tables (PWT) methodology, for pre‐1940 income estimates. We develop a methodology to determine which benchmark in combination with time series produces the best anchor for the historical income estimates in the MPD. We conclude that the best way forward for the Maddison Project is to stick to the original 1990 benchmark, yet with two important changes. First, we integrate the 2011 benchmark for the post‐1990 period, and second, we fine tune the dataset for the pre‐1940 period by integrating a new historical benchmark for the US/UK comparison in 1909. By integrating more benchmarks, the MPD moves closer to a multiple benchmark approach as developed by the PWT.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/joes.12618

Related works:
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:bla:jecsur:v:39:y:2025:i:2:p:631-671

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0950-0804

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economic Surveys from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().