The Great Divergence: Historical patterns of modern economic growth

This course deals with the recent attempts made to explain the diverging global patterns of economic growth since the mid-eighteenth century – the time of the industrial revolution. By then, GDP per capita levels were rather equally distributed across Europe and East Asia. In the third quarter of the twentieth century, about 1970, the GDP per capita gaps between Western Europe and Asia were abysmal. A growing literature in economic history calls this process “The Great Divergence”.

Since the 1980s, East Asia and South East Asia have begun to close in on West Europe in real GDP per capita terms. The aim of this course is to examine the diverging patterns of economic and demographic developments in historical perspective, with particular focus on Western Europe and East and South East Asia.

The course focuses on the debate between different views in the literature on the “The Great Divergence”, and asks questions such as: why did Britain, and not China, host the Industrial Revolution; how large was the British advantage in standard of living relative to China in the mid-eighteenth century; and why did it take so long for East Asia to have industrializations? To answer these questions the course will confront a range of theoretical perspectives on the causes and consequences of economic growth.

Factors such as domestic and global institutions, resource endowments, historical preconditions, welfare conditions, demography and geography will be considered.