EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Accounting for the “Little Divergence”: What drove economic growth in pre-industrial Europe, 1300–1800?

Alexandra de Pleijt () and Jan Luiten van Zanden

European Review of Economic History, 2016, vol. 20, issue 4, 387-409

Abstract: We test various hypotheses about the causes of the Little Divergence, using new data and focusing on trends in GDP per capita and urbanization. We find evidence that confirms the hypothesis that human capital formation was the driver of growth, and that institutional changes (in particular the rise of active Parliaments) were closely related to economic growth. We also test for the role of religion (the spread of Protestantism): this has affected human capital formation, but does not in itself have an impact on growth.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hew013 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Accounting for the ‘Little Divergence’ What drove economic growth in pre-industrial Europe, 1300-1800? (2016) Downloads
Working Paper: Accounting for the ‘Little Divergence’ What drove economic growth in preindustrial Europe, 1300-1800? (2013) Downloads
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:oup:ereveh:v:20:y:2016:i:4:p:387-409.

Access Statistics for this article

European Review of Economic History is currently edited by Kerstin Enflo, Christopher M. Meissner and Joan R. Rosés

More articles in European Review of Economic History from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().

 
Page updated 2023-09-28
Handle: RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:20:y:2016:i:4:p:387-409.