War inflation as an agent of income tax modernization

Sara Torregrosa-Hetland

Oriol Sabaté

 

The World Wars were associated with progressive tax policies in most Western countries. Top marginal income tax rates increased to unprecedented levels, while other fiscal instruments, such as excess profits taxes, were implemented during the wars to meet the extraordinary revenue needs (Scheve and Stasavage, 2016).

In the income tax, this leap in progressive reforms came along with the broadening of the tax base, which brought for the first time low and middle incomes into the tax (Brownlee, 1996; Broadberry and Howlett, 1998, 2005; Rockoff, 2012). This fundamental transformation was the result of both regulatory changes, which reduced exemption limits and personal deductions, and high levels of inflation, which eroded the real value of these same exemption limits and deductions, pushing incomes previously excluded from paying the tax into the fiscal net (even though their real incomes did not increase).

Our latest paper published in EREH (Torregrosa-Hetland and Sabaté, 2021a) quantifies the role that inflation played in the downward expansion of the tax during the World Wars. We first clarify and estimate the ways in which inflation affects the distribution of income tax due across different levels of income, and, second, calculate its effects on tax progressivity and redistribution. Specifically, we analyze the income taxes of Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, by comparing the actual operation of the tax with alternative counterfactual scenarios of lower or no inflation (here, as in the paper, we concentrate on our first counterfactual, defined by the level of inflation over the five pre-war years). The exercise is based on disaggregating the original tabulated tax data (following Blanchet et al., 2017), and imputing income tax payments to the synthetic observations according to the regulations in place (see also Torregrosa-Hetland and Sabaté, 2021b).

Inflation expanded the tax: more taxpayers, more revenue

Our results show that inflation was indeed a powerful mechanism for the downward expansion of the tax. By the end of World War I, 75% of British taxpayers had been incorporated into the fiscal net by excess inflation. This figure reached 68% and 38% in Sweden and the United States respectively. The impact of inflation by 1920 in Sweden was so extreme that these new taxpayers amounted to 28% of the total tax units in the country (i.e., of the total number of potential tax returns if everyone would have been required to file). During World War II, nearly 4 million British taxpayers started paying the tax for no other reason than nominal increases in their incomes (see Table 1).

Table 1. Additional taxpayers brought in by inflation

Country	Year	Scenario	New taxpayers brought in by inflation
			Absolute number	Percent of total taxpayers	Percent of total tax units
Sweden	1920	1	933,924	71%	30%
	1920	2	876,513	68%	28%
	1946	1	292,665	11%	8%
	1946	2	166,053	6%	4%
United Kingdom	1919	1	2,913,250	77%	12%
	1919	2	2,840,603	75%	12%
	1949	1	6,282,209	45%	24%
	1949	2	4,013,889	29%	15%
United States	1919	1	1,488,373	44%	4%
	1919	2	1,300,997	38%	3%
	1946	1	2,670,648	6%	5%
	1946	2	1,484,428	4%	3%

 

Inflation did not only bring new taxpayers into the tax, but also pushed existing taxpayers into higher tax brackets (due to the erosion of the real value of bracket limits and deductions). As a result, inflation was responsible for as much as 80% of the income tax revenue in Sweden in 1920, and near 65% and 57% in the United Kingdom and the United States in 1919 (see Table 2). Of this additional “inflation revenue”, the majority was paid by existing taxpayers that had been pushed into higher tax brackets (84% in Sweden by the end of World War I, and above 90% in the United Kingdom and the United States; see Table 3). New taxpayers entered massively into the tax during the two wars, but their relatively low effective tax rates (particularly during World War I) made the revenue impact more modest in absolute terms.

Table 2. Additional income tax revenue brought in by inflation

Country	Year	Scenario	New tax revenue brought in by inflation
			Million current krs / £ / $	Percent of total income tax revenue
Sweden	1920	1	145	82%
	1920	2	142	80%
	1946	1	588	44%
	1946	2	391	29%
United Kingdom	1919	1	210	67%
	1919	2	200	64%
	1949	1	822	67%
	1949	2	602	49%
United States	1919	1	880	63%
	1919	2	801	57%
	1946	1	7,629	41%
	1946	2	4,966	27%

Table 3. Distribution of the additional revenue caused by inflation between taxpayer groups

Country	Year	Scenario	New taxpayers brought in by inflation	Rest of taxpayers	Top 10% of tax units	Top 1% of tax units
Sweden	1920	1	17.3%	82.7%	80.6%	52.3%
	1920	2	15.2%	84.8%	80.3%	52.0%
	1946	1	3.9%	96.1%	57.0%	27.3%
	1946	2	2.9%	97.1%	56.9%	27.1%
United Kingdom	1919	1	8.0%	92.0%	97.8%	76.6%
	1919	2	7.6%	92.4%	97.6%	76.1%
	1949	1	17.3%	82.7%	66.7%	33.5%
	1949	2	13.4%	86.6%	65.0%	32.3%
United States	1919	1	8.0%	92.0%	99.9%	80.6%
	1919	2	7.1%	92.9%	99.9%	80.4%
	1946	1	0.7%	99.3%	55.0%	31.0%
	1946	2	0.4%	99.6%	54.7%	30.6%

 

Inflation made the income tax less progressive, but more redistributive

What was the impact of these changes in the progressivity of the income tax? Since the increases in tax burden were, in relative terms, more intense at the bottom of the income distribution, inflation had a regressive effect. This was particularly true in the United Kingdom during World War I. Figure 1 and 2 show the extent to which low and middle incomes became subject to higher average effective tax rates by the end of the wars due to inflation.

Figure 1. Average effective tax rates under different inflation scenarios at the end of WWI

Figure 2. Average effective tax rates under different inflation scenarios at the end of WWII

Interestingly, though, the impact of inflation on redistribution was positive. While inflation reduced the level of progressivity, it increased the size of a still progressive tax, which in turn increased the amount of income that was placed into the redistributive channel. For instance, the British income tax reduced inequality by 5.11 Gini points in 1919, and no less than 28% of this effect was caused by accumulated excess inflation since 1913. In this way, inflation was one of the drivers of the transition from a ‘class tax’ into a ‘mass tax’: one that obtained revenue from most of the population, forming a strong basis for fiscal citizenship, and which became one of the major redistributive instruments of the post-war era/for decades to come.

 

References

BLANCHET, T., FOURNIER, J., and PIKETTY, T. (2017): Generalized Pareto Curves: Theory and Applications. WID.world Working Paper Series 2017/3.

BROADBERRY, S. and HOWLETT, P. (1998): 'The United Kingdom: ‘Victory at all costs’', in M. Harrison (Ed.), The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 43-80.

BROADBERRY, S. and HOWLETT, P. (2005): 'The United Kingdom during World War I: business as usual?', in S. Broadberry and M. Harrison (eds.) The Economics of World War I, New York: Cambridge University Press, 206-234.

BROWNLEE, E. (1996): Federal Taxation in America: A History, New York: Cambridge University Press.

ROCKOFF, H. (2012). America’s Economic Way of War. War and the US Economy from the Spanish-American War to the Persian Gulf War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SCHEVE, K., and D. STASAVAGE (2016): Taxing the Rich. A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe. Princeton University Press.

TORREGROSA-HETLAND, S., and SABATÉ, O. (2021a): 'Income tax progressivity and inflation during the World Wars', forthcoming in European Review of Economic History.

TORREGROSA-HETLAND, S., and SABATÉ, O. (2021b): 'Income taxes and redistribution in the early twentieth century', Lund Papers in Economic History: General Issues; no. 224.

Fiscal capacity in ‘responsible government’ colonies: the Cape Colony in comparative perspective, 1865-1910

 by Abel Gwaindepi, Lund University 

It has been accepted that colonists in settler colonies were willing to shoulder unusually high tax burdens to assert their self-rule and autonomy. Was this willingness to shoulder high tax burdens by the colonists generalized through the British Empire? To explore this question, I study and compare the Cape Colony’s fiscal path to the experiences of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

 

A divergent fiscal path?

How did the tax to GDP shares evolve in each colony? Figure 2 shows the Tax to GDP ratios of the four colonies. What is clear is the divergent trend for the Cape, especially from the second half of the 1880s. Australia, Canada and New Zealand managed to maintain modest increases, but the Cape’s ratio fell from around two to one per cent. Despite economic growth which surpassed some Australian colonies in some years (Magee, Greyling, & Verhoef, 2016) there was less progress being made on the fiscal front.

Figure 1: Tax/GDP ratios (%): The Cape’s divergent path

The phase from 1876 to 1885 shows a possible catch-up trajectory, but this was not sustained. The patterns in the Cape belie earlier generic conclusions, arguing that colonies with responsible governments benefited from unoccupied lands and turned the "free resources into funds to support public expenditures" (Davis & Huttenback, 1986, p. 224). Figure 2 below shows the plot of recursive estimates of the tax capacity regression on the Cape dummy when tax per capita is estimated using the total population (left-hand) and the settler population only for the Cape (right-hand). The estimate considers the differences between the Cape as a whole, and the ‘Cape-settler’, which only looks at the European settler population.

Figure 2: The Cape Colony’s tax per capita relative to other colonies

The logic behind this separation is two-folded. Firstly, the number of indigenous people in the Cape Colony represents a much larger proportion than in the other colonies, and the second reason lies in the (deliberate) exclusionary policies and practises that existed in the Cape.

The clear picture is that the Cape Colony’s per capita taxes were systematically lower than the other colonies. Controlling for racial structure by excluding the indigenous population shows that the settler enclave might have experienced higher taxes per capita than settlers in other colonies. This is so with the caveat that the tax per capita for only the settlers does inflate tax capacity given a lack of basis of accurately measuring what the indigenous people contributed (Feinstein, 2005). What is clear is that on average the Cape Colony’s per capita taxes did show signs of converging to the trends of the other settler colonies when diamonds were discovered in 1867. Settlers preferred indigenous people to be taxed but they also organised public goods delivery to exclusively towards the settler enclave, with minimal ‘leakages’ to the indigenous people. Mkandawire (2010, p. 1651) aptly refers to this as a ‘racist’ welfare state. Given that land and mining taxes were important surrogates of income taxes in other colonies (McLean, 2012; Sanders, Sandvik, & Storli, 2019), the loss at the Cape had long term fiscal ramifications.

Was the Cape Colony “recklessly extravagant” on borrowing?

The Economist reported in 1883 that the “Every year since 1875 has found the Cape government a fresh borrower in the London market…she has been recklessly extravagant” (The Economist 1883, p.1576). The study uses debt to GDP, bond yileds and the spreads over the British consolidated annuities (consols)to trace levels of indebtedness. This is inline the ‘empire effect’ litreature which argues that British colonies had low intrests rates and tended to enjoyed investor good will despite poor economic fundamentals (Ferguson & Schularick, 2006; Gardner, 2017). Potentially, this could be misused since the hard work of building fiscal capacity could be reneged on and be replaced by borrowing (Accominotti, Flandreau, Rezzik, & Zumer, 2010, p. 49). Figure 3 below shows that the Cape was at the higher end with high levels of debt and risk of default shown by the highest level of yields and debt/GDP, which in light of poor fiscal capacity made vulnerable to default.

 

Figure 3: Debt/GDP ratios and bond yields

Both taxation and debt patterns demonstrate a unique path for the Cape with comparatively low per capita taxes, high deficits, and the highest level of indebtedness. Had the colonists in New Zealand, Australia and Canada met similar conditions as those at the Cape, were their policies going to be different? For instance, McLean (2012) argues that if an institution was harmful to Australia’s prosperity, "it was either abolished or modified to make it growth-promoting". This is at times referred to as ‘institutional flexibility’ (McLean, 2012, p. 29). What held back the Cape colonists? One aspect is worth pointing out. The share of indigenous population which was fundamental to the question of who could access and have rights to the natural resources, mainly land and minerals. The Cape’s ‘moral economy’ restricted potential revenues by narrowing rights to a few, even amongst the Europeans themselves.

Similar to what Frankema & van Waijenburg (2014) argue for French vs British colonies in Africa, I question the ‘purchase’ or instrumentality of labels such as ‘responsible government’ since the endogenization of these imported institutions in the Cape produced outcomes leaning towards what research has shown for fiscal systems in Spanish colonies in Latin America. I also argue that it is also important to bring balance to the analysis by questioning the assumed superiority of institutions of the other settler colonies. The ease with which the institutions of ‘responsible government’ benefited the other colonies should be measured and assessed relative to the lighter challenges they faced relative to the Cape. This allows the appraisals to be balanced in terms of how the Cape settlers are judged compared to those in other settler colonies.

Was the Cape settler colonialism exceptional? Recent research has shown that both on the African continent and in the world, South Africa was much less of an exception up to 1920s than it became in the 1970s (Ross, Mager, & Nasson, 2011, p. 15). The share of indigenous population which was fundamental to the question of who could access and have rights to the natural resources, mainly land and minerals, impinged on the development and consolidation of the fiscal system. Hence the ‘moral economy’ which sought to cater for the settler enclave reduced the taxable capacity amongst the indigenous majority, ultimately shrinking the taxable capacity of the entire economy.

 

Accominotti, O., Flandreau, M., Rezzik, R., & Zumer, F. (2010). Black man’s burden, white man’s welfare: control, devolution and development in the British Empire, 1880–1914. European Review of Economic History, 14(1), 47–70.

Davis, L., & Huttenback, R. (1986). Mammon and the pursuit of Empire: The political economy of British imperialism, 1860-1912. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feinstein, C. (2005). An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination, and Development. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ferguson, N., & Schularick, M. (2006). The Empire Effect: The Determinants of Country Risk in the First Age of Globalization, 1880–1913. The Journal of Economic History, 66(2), 283–312.

Frankema, E., & van Waijenburg, M. (2014). Metropolitan blueprints of colonial taxation ? Lessons from fiscal capacity building in British and French Africa, 1880-1940. Journal of African History, 55(3), 371–400.

Gardner, L. (2017). Colonialism or supersanctions: sovereignty and debt in West Africa, 1871-1914. European Review of Economic History, 21(1), 215–252.

Magee, G., Greyling, L., & Verhoef, G. (2016). South Africa in the Australian mirror: per capita real GDP in the Cape Colony, Natal, Victoria, and New South Wales, 1861–1909. Economic History Review, 69(3), 260–290.

McLean, I. (2012). Why Australia prospered: The shifting sources of economic growth. Princeton University Press.

Mkandawire, T. (2010). On Tax Efforts and Colonial Heritage in Africa. Journal of Development Studies, 46(10), 1647–1669.

Ross, R., Mager, A. K., & Nasson, B. (2011). The Cambridge history of South Africa volume 2: 1885-1994. The Cambridge History of South Africa Volume 2: 1885-1994 (Vol. 2). https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521869836

Sanders, A., Sandvik, P., & Storli, E. (2019). The political economy of resource regulation: An international and comparativehistory, 1850-2015. Vancouver: UBC Press.

 

Reconstructing income inequality in a colonial cash crop economy: five social tables for Uganda, 1925–1965

Michiel de Haas (Wageningen University)

Few doubt that colonialism generated new economic cleavages in African societies (Van de Walle 2009). At the same time, we know very little about the extent of such economic inequality in different African colonies and across time. In this article, I measure income inequality in Uganda, located in central-East Africa and colonized by Britain, in five benchmark years between 1925 (mid-colonial period) and 1965 (just after independence). I find that overall income inequality was low compared to other African colonies, but also find that sharp fault lines existed, especially along racial lines.

Based on what we know about Uganda’s pre-colonial and colonial history (Reid 2017), how much inequality should we expect? Uganda’s economy was predicated on smallholder production of export crops – cotton and coffee most importantly (De Haas 2017). In a land-abundant context, this economic structure fostered broad-based access to self-provisioning and cash income, which may have suppressed income inequality. On the other hand, we have reasons to hypothesize that colonial Uganda was unequal.  First, pre-colonial Uganda was far from egalitarian. For example there were sharp inequalities within the centralized Great Lakes Kingdoms, some of which came to make up a large portion of colonial Uganda, as well as between these Kingdoms and other parts of the territory. Second, the agricultural trading and processing sector in colonial Uganda was in the hands of South Asian expatriates, while the higher rungs of the colonial government were filled with Europeans. To what extent were these inequality-suppressing and -inducing factors visible in the country’s income distribution?

Attuning social tables to the context of colonial Africa

To reconstruct Uganda’s colonial inequality landscape, I use the ‘social table approach’, which simplifies the full income distribution of a given population into a smaller number of ‘social classes’. I distinguish eleven such classes for 15 districts each: three mutually exclusive income classes of African wage workers, five mutually exclusive income classes of self-employed earners, two classes of Europeans, and one class of Asians. Social tables have been employed by others in research on colonial Africa as well: Botswana (Bolt and Hillbom 2016), Ghana (Aboagye and Bolt, 2021), Kenya (Bigsten 1987) and Ivory Coast and Senegal (Alfani and Tadei 2019). This literature is synthesized in a recent paper by Hillbom, Bolt, De Haas and Tadei (2021).

My aim is not just to provide in-depth analysis of the Ugandan case, but also to make progress in finetuning the use of social tables in an African colonial context. Most importantly, in the latter respect, I show that it matters a lot what population we use to rank incomes – households or individuals – and how we think of income distribution within households. I demonstrate that households with higher incomes also tended to have more members. This means that such households come out as relatively ‘high income’ when we compare them on an aggregate level, but not when we break down the distribution to their constituent individual members. However, when we allow for intra-household inequality, a household head still benefit from adding more members to the household, as long as he (typically a polygamous man) is able to extract at least some income from additional household members. Thus, in an African, context, where people accumulate ‘wealth in people’ (Guyer and Belinga 1987) and households differ considerably in size, it is important to consider these dynamics explicitly when thinking about and measuring inequality. The results below are robust to using these different assumptions about the ranking population.

How unequal was colonial Uganda?

I answer this question along four lines: in comparison to other African colonies, and in terms of space (regional inequality), race (Africans versus expatriates) and class (income differentiation among African wage earners and the self-employed). I find that in comparative perspective, Uganda was fairly equal and did not see overall inequality rise during the period studied (Figure 1). I attribute this to Uganda’s land abundance and favourable agricultural conditions, which enabled the far majority of households to provision their own food. Moreover, Uganda’s main crop – cotton – was labour intensive and did not favour the rate of unequal accumulation that, for example, livestock did in colonial Botswana (Bolt and Hillbom 2016).

Figure 1: Gini coefficients for Uganda (1925-1965) under different assumptions

Using the Theil coefficient, we can zoom in on how different cleavages contributed to overall inequality (Figure 2). Here, I find that race dominated as the most important fault line in Uganda, especially before the 1950s. The 1930s were most extreme in this respect, as European households earned, on average, some 60 times as much as the average African household, and Asians close to 30 times as much. Regional differences, in the meanwhile were certainly present but contributed only moderately to overall inequality – especially when self-provisioning is taken into account. Inequality among African classes rose in the late-colonial period, as some farmers specialized in coffee and livestock, while the number and average incomes of salaried professionals rose as well.

 

Figure 2: decomposition of inequality in Uganda along lines of race, class and region.

Note - a similar text also appears on the African Economic History Network homepage

References

Aboagye, P. Y., & Bolt, J. (2021). Long-Term Trends in Income Inequality: Winners and Losers of Economic Change in Ghana, 1891-1960. Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming.

Alfani, G. & Tadei, F. (2019). Income Inequality in French West Africa: Building Social Tables for Pre-Independence Senegal and Ivory Coast. UB Economics Working Papers, 396.

Bigsten, A. (1987). Income distribution and growth in a dual economy: Kenya, 1914-1976. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg)

Bolt, J., & Hillbom, E. (2016). Long‐term trends in economic inequality: lessons from colonial Botswana, 1921–74. The Economic History Review, 69(4), 1255-1284.

De Haas, M. (2017). Measuring rural welfare in colonial Africa: did Uganda's smallholders thrive? The Economic History Review, 70(2), 605-631.

De Haas, M. (2021). Reconstructing income inequality in a colonial cash crop economy: five social tables for  Uganda, 1925–1965. European Review of Economic History, forthcoming.

Guyer, J. I., & Belinga, S. M. E. (1995). Wealth in people as wealth in knowledge: Accumulation and composition in Equatorial Africa. Journal of African History, 36(1), 91-120.

Hillbom, E., Bolt, J., De Haas, M. & Tadei, F. (2021). Measuring historical inequality in Africa: What can we learn from social tables? African Economic History Network Working Paper, No. 63

Reid, R. J. (2017). A history of modern Uganda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van de Walle, N. (2009). The institutional origins of inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. Annual Review of Political Science, 12, 307-327.

 

 

 

 

 

L’Histoire Immobile? A Reappraisal of French Economic Growth using the Demand-Side Approach, 1280-1850.

Leonardo Ridolfi (University of Siena) and Alessandro Nuvolari (Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies)

Historians interested in the study of economic performance of preindustrial societies owe a major intellectual debt to Angus Maddison. Even if by means of somewhat speculative methods, Maddison (2001) produced the first comprehensive set of estimates of GDP per capita for a large group of countries which resulted in an intriguing account of the dynamics of economic growth since the end of the Middle Ages (Maddison 2007).

This preliminary global quantitative assessment has prompted historians to later embark in more refined statistical reconstructions of the long-term evolution of output per capita and to develop new ways to integrate these different country-specific estimates over time and across space (Bolt and Van Zanden 2014, Bolt and Van Zanden 2020).

Notwithstanding the riches of source materials dealing with prices and wages, France has been left at the margins of the ongoing efforts of reconstruction of these “second generation” estimates of GDP per capita.

In this paper, we tackle this issue, by providing new estimates of output per capita for France over the period 1280–1850 using the demand-side approach.

The French case is interesting for two main reasons.

The first reason is that an important historiographical tradition, made popular by the French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie with a famous article first appeared in the Annales in 1974 (see picture below), has depicted France as a paradigmatic case of an inherently stagnant economy dominated by Malthusian checks and other institutional and cultural constraints. Hence, in this perspective, the French case may perhaps provide new materials for assessing the overall plausibility of the Malthusian model as a suitable empirical characterization of the long run evolution of living standards in Europe before the Industrial Revolution.

The second reason relates to the very origins of modern economic growth in pre-industrial Europe and, more specifically, to the analysis of the so-called “Little Divergence”, the process whereby the North Sea Area became the most prosperous and dynamic part of the continent.

Much discussion surrounds the timing and causes of why, between the Middle Ages and the modern period, the frontier of Europe’s economic development moved from the Mediterranean space and particularly Italy -which so far had been the world economic leader- to the countries of the North Sea region (Allen 2001, Broadberry 2020, De Pleijt and Van Zanden 2016). Despite that, there is still a general lack of consensus on the evolution of living standards and the main determinants of this process. In this context, a fresh assessment of French economic performance, a neighbouring country with multiple political, economic, and military interactions with the North Sea area could contribute to shed new light on the drivers of this initial phase of modern economic growth.

 

 

Results

Our analysis highlights three main results (see Figure 6 of the article, reproduced below).

First, French output per capita fluctuated with no trend over the long term, with perhaps the exception of a modest “efflorescence” of economic growth during the seventeenth century. Until the seventeenth century, this pattern of growth chimes with Le Roy Ladurie’s (1974, p.688) notion of “motionless history” according to which ‘malgré immenses changements parmi les superstructures celui-ci tel en lui-même se retrouve finalement très proche la veille des famines de la Fronde et de celles de 1693 ou de 1709 de ce il était trois siècles et demi ou quatre siècles auparavant la veille de la famine de 1315 (despite the immense changes of the superstructures, the system finally finds itself very close, on the eve of the famines of the Fronde and those of 1693 or 1709, to what it was three and a half or four centuries before the eve of the famine of 1315).’

In this respect, Italy, the Netherlands and England appear as the main exceptions to this broad European pattern of relative stagnation.

The second result speaks more closely to the debate about the level of comparative development of England and France over the long run which a long historiographic tradition has seen as a useful vantage point for studying the origins of the Industrial Revolution (Crouzet 1985).

Our new series of GDP per capita challenges the notion of an early modern “Little Divergence” between England and France (Allen 2001) and points instead to a later divergence taking place by about the second half of the seventeenth century.

Finally, in our reappraisal of French economic performance, the French growth experience appears to be as an ‘intermediate case’ between the sustained growth pattern of the North Sea region countries and the stagnating or declining trend of the rest of Europe.

 

 

Figure 6. French economic performance in international comparative perspective, 1276–1850

Sources: France: our estimates; England: Broadberry et al. (2015); Holland: Van Zanden and Van Leeuwen (2012); Italy (Centre-North): Malanima (2011); Poland: Malinowski and Van Zanden (2017); Portugal: Palma and Reis (2019); Spain: Alvarez-Nogal and Prados de la Escosura (2013); Sweden: 1300–1560, Krantz (2017); 1560–1850, Schön and Krantz (2012).

Notes: the values in 1990 GK$ dollars are those reported by the authors except for Italy (Centre-North), Poland, Spain, and Sweden because the authors did not report annual series in 1990 GK$ dollars. In these cases, we made the conversions using the following benchmarks: Italy (Centre-North), 1,486$ in 1861 (Malanima 2011, p.218); Poland, 946$ in 1870 (2013 Maddison project); Spain, 1,079$ in 1850 (2013 Maddison project), and Sweden 1,076$ in 1850 (2013 Maddison project). All series are 11-year moving averages.

 

References

Allen, R. C. (2001). The great divergence in European wages and prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War. Explorations in Economic History 38, pp. 411–447.

Álvarez-Nogal, C. and Prados De La Escosura, L. (2013). The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850). Economic History Review 66, pp. 1–37.

Bolt, J. and Van Zanden, J. L. (2014). The Maddison Project: collaborative research on historical national accounts. Economic History Review 67, pp. 627–51.

Bolt, J. and Van Zanden, J. L. (2020). Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy. A new 2020 update. Maddion Project Working Paper n. 15.

Broadberry, S. (2020). The Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence: Recent Findings from Historical National Accounting. CEPR Discussion Paper n. 15207.

Broadberry, S. Campbell, B. M. Klein, A. Overton, M. and Van Leeuwen, B. (2015). British economic growth, 1270–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crouzet, F. (1985). De la supériorité de l’Angleterre sur la France: l'économique et l'imaginaire, XVIIe–XXe siècles. Paris: Libr. Académique Perrin.

De Pleijt, A. and van Zanden, J. L. (2016). Accounting for the “Little Divergence”: What drove economic growth in pre-industrial Europe? European Review of Economic History 20, pp. 387-409.

Krantz, O. (2017). Swedish GDP 1300–1560: A Tentative Estimate. Lund Papers in Economic History 152.

Le Roy Ladurie, E. (1974). L’histoire immobile. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 29, pp. 673–692.

Maddison, A. (2001), The World Economy: a Millennial Perspective. Paris: OECD.

Maddison, A. (2007), Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Malanima, P. (2011). The long decline of a leading economy: GDP in central and northern Italy, 1300–1913. European Review of Economic History 15, pp. 169–219.

Malinowski, M. and Van Zanden, J. L. (2017). Income and its distribution in preindustrial Poland. Cliometrica 11, pp. 375–404.

Palma, N. and Reis, J. (2019). From Convergence to Divergence: Portuguese Economic Growth, 1527–1850. Journal of Economic History 79, pp. 477–506.

Schön, L. and Krantz, O. (2012). The Swedish economy in the early modern period: constructing historical national accounts. European Review of Economic History 16, pp. 529–49.

Van Zanden, J. L. and Van Leeuwen, B. (2012). Persistent but not consistent: The growth of national income in Holland 1347–1807. Explorations in economic history 49, pp. 119–30.