Preindustrial Economic Growth: ca. 1270–1820

Alexandra M. Pleijt () and Jan Luiten Zanden ()
Additional contact information
Alexandra M. Pleijt: Economic and Environmental History group, Wageningen University & Research
Jan Luiten Zanden: Economic and Social History, Utrecht University

A chapter in Handbook of Cliometrics, 2024, pp 681-697 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter presents an overview of the current state of the art regarding the trends and causes of preindustrial economic growth in Western Europe between ca. 1270 and 1820. In doing so, the chapter introduces measures of living standards – i.e., real wages and per capita GDP. The Low Countries and England showed more or less stable real wages after the increase in wages in the fourteenth century following the Black Death, whereas real wages elsewhere in Europe declined in the long run. This “Little Divergence” between the North Sea area and the rest of the continent is also evident from estimates on per capita GDP. On the continent, per capita GDP stagnated or declined, whereas Holland and England showed a lot of progress – they were substantially richer in 1750 than in 1500. There were two key developments in this process. The first is the Black Death, which increased living standards in the countries bordering the North Sea regions due to well-functioning labor and capital markets. The second is the shift to premodern economic growth following the Black Death. The chapter summarizes the causes of the vast increases in living standards in the North Sea region between 1348 and 1820, including human capital formation and international trade.

Keywords: Preindustrial growth; Little Divergence; Industrial revolution; North-Western Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-35583-7_63

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031355837

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-35583-7_63

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().