Economic History of the World

Statistics are essential in the study of economic history. Unfortunately, there is a huge problem concerning historical statistics: for most of human history we have none. Writing has been invented most likely for the purpose of keeping accounts (most Sumerian texts still being dug out are inventory lists) but national accounts are a more recent invention. That means that in estimating economic performance for periods before modern states we have to do a lot of guessing. A combination of preserved documents (censuses, church records…) and archeological evidence is used to make those guesses as educated as possible. The task is very difficult and the margin of error can be fairly large.

I want to point to an excellent source of historical statistics.

Angus Maddison has done enormously useful work in this area. He has compiled tables with data on population and economic performance. He did it for for all regions of the world and an impressive period - two millenia! Thanks to this excellent effort, we can now compare regions of the world at a glance. If you’re into quantifying things like I am, the very idea should make you warm around the heart. I’m so impressed I’ve ordered Maddison’s book The World Economy: Historical Statistics from Amazon.

But what I’m getting at is that much of this data is also available online. Here is the link to the main table:

World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2006 AD (xls)

Angus Maddison’s web page also gives some sneak peaks at his other books, as well as sample tables and charts from them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.