In Good Company: About Agency and Economic Development in Global Perspective

The paper discusses some evidence, based on a review of new literature on economic history, about what is referred to as the Sen-hypothesis, that increasing human agency (of both men and women) is a key factor in economic development. It briefly discusses various dimensions of agency (or its absence): slavery (as the absolute suppression of human agency), access to markets, agency concerning marriage, and political participation. This concept perhaps also allows economic historians to move beyond the historical determinism that is central to much recent work in this field.agency, economic development, economic history

Book production and the onset of modern economic growth

Endogenous growth theory suggests that human capital formation plays a significant role for the ‘wealth and poverty of nations.’ In contrast to previous studies which denied the role of human capital as a crucial determinant of for really long-term growth, we confirm its importance. Indicators of human capital like literacy rates are lacking for the period of 1450-1913; hence, we use per capita book production as a proxy for advanced literacy skills. This study explains how, and to what extent, growth disparities are a function of human capital formation.Book Production, Economic Growth, Human Capital

Two concerns about the interpretation of the estimates of historical national accounts before 1850

As contribution to the debate about the interpretation of the process of economic growth before the Industrial Revolution, we discuss two concerns about the currently available estimates of historical national accounts and the way in which these estimates should be interpreted. Firstly, we argue that estimates of the long-Term trends of economic growth should make use of all information contained in time series of Gross Domestic Product (GDP henceforth), and therefore use standard regression analysis to establish those trends. Secondly, we point to the problem that the time series of historical GDP are based on very different estimation procedures, which probably affect the outcome in terms of the level of GDP per capita in the period before 1850. Both concerns imply that we do not entirely agree with Jack Goldstone's views of pre-industrial growth. In particular, his conclusion that growth was cyclical before 1800 is inconsistent with the available GDP estimates, which point to sustained growth, albeit at a very low rate

Debates on industrialisation and economic growth in the Netherlands

CITATION: De Jong, H. & Van Zanden, J. L. 2014. Debates on industrialisation and economic growth in the Netherlands. Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 11(2):85–110, doi:10.18352/tseg.133.The original publication is available at https://www.tseg.nlWith the renewed interest in macro-economic quantifi cation since the 1950s the study of long-term economic growth and development became also an important theme within the discipline of economic history. It developed into a major tool to analyse the process of industrialisation and to identify the forces which explain long-term growth and stagnation of the rich and poor parts of the world. This chapter examines the new branch of macro-economic history as it developed in the Netherlands after 1945. This new approach initially focused on the problem of the slow industrialization during the nineteenth century, but gradually branched out to include the early modern period and the twentieth century. Studies in this fi eld were characterized by a strong quantitative orientation, and resulted in systematic overview of the growth of the Dutch economy from the Late Middle Ages to the present.https://www.tseg.nl/articles/abstract/10.18352/tseg.133/Publisher's versio