Friday, February 6, 2009

Thorough Source on Historical GDP

Google Books has a scan of one of the definitive sources: Angus Maddison’s The World Economy: Historical Statistics.

It shows the oldest reasonable estimate of GDP: in England and Wales, in 1688, nominal GDP was about 54 million pounds.

To grow to the current nominal GDP of the U.K. (a modestly bigger country) of around 3 Trillion pounds would require an average growth rate for nominal GDP of 3.5% to be sustained for 321 years.

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