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Long-Run Economic Development: A Survey of the Literature

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A History of Global Capitalism

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Abstract

This chapter presents a review of the literature on long-run economic development. It may not be exhaustive and I am sure I have missed many. Nevertheless, this should offer the reader a wide spectrum of views in this literature.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that large sections of Chap. 13 is a reproduction of my earlier work Bhattacharyya (2011) with permission from the publisher.

  2. 2.

    Historians refer to the economic divergence between the West and the East as Great Divergence (see Broadberry and Gupta 2005).

  3. 3.

    The Fertile Crescent spans a part of the modern day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan valley. For further reference, see map in Diamond (1997) p. 135.

  4. 4.

    Yang and Borland (1991) uses a growth model to formalise Adam Smith’s notion of division of labour.

  5. 5.

    This is disputed by many if we consider the last 50 years. World income distribution has increased over the last 50 years especially with the impressive growth performances of India and China over the last two to three decades. But the diverging trend certainly holds over a longer period.

  6. 6.

    Wacziarg and Welch (2003) improve the Sachs and Warner (1995a) measure and extend it to the 1990s. Their measure, however, is not free from the basic criticisms of Rodrik and Rodriguez (2000). Bhattacharyya (2012) examine the effect of trade openness on institutions.

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Bhattacharyya, S. (2020). Long-Run Economic Development: A Survey of the Literature. In: A History of Global Capitalism. Frontiers in Economic History. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58736-9_13

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