Must-read: Roger Fouquet and Stephen Broadberry: “Seven Centuries of European Economic Growth and Decline”

Must-Read: How rapidly would one anticipate that the Malthusian scissors would work, anyway?

Roger Fouquet and Stephen Broadberry: Seven Centuries of European Economic Growth and Decline, Journal of Economic Perspectives 29:4 (Fall), pp. 227-44: “New annual GDP per capita data for six European countries over the last seven hundred years…

…paint a clearer picture of the history of European economic development…. Numerous periods of economic growth before the nineteenth century—periods of unsustained, but rising GDP per capita…. Many of the economies experienced substantial economic decline. Thus, rather than being stagnant, pre-nineteenth century European economies experienced a great deal of change…