Summary
This study explores the long-run dynamics of economic growth, with particular reference to The Netherlands. The time span covered extends backwards to the mid-nineteenth century, using new time series on disaggregated physical and human capital stocks for the period 1850-1913. Economic growth in the nineteenth century is shown to have had a strong physical capital-using bias, initially concentrated in buildings and infrastructure. The close relationship between investment in machinery and economic growth did not begin to take shape until the end of the nineteenth century, to increase in strength in the course of the twentieth century.
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An earlier version of this article was published as a research memorandum of the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GD 12), University of Groningen, October 1994. This article is based on research sponsored by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Groningen, and by the Foundation of Economic, Social, and Spatial Sciences (ESR), which is part of The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). For helpful comments, we thank Jan Jacobs, Professor W.H. Buiter, Bart van Ark, Rainer Fremdling, participants of the Economic History colloquium at the University of Groningen and of the European Historical Economics Society's Summer School 1994 (Florence), especially Professor Alan Taylor (Northwestern University), participants of the Quantitative Economic History Conference 1995 (Cambridge U.K.), and two anonymous referees. Of course, the usual disclaimer holds.
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Albers, R., Groote, P. The empirics of growth. De Economist 144, 429–444 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01682835
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01682835