28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great statistics covering 2,000 years, December 1, 2008
This review is from: Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History (Paperback)
The reason why you would buy this book is to get a collection of statistics going back 2,000 years in time. These data are not easy to create so the author has to be commended for providing a good synthesis of the data.
In addition to the data, the text contains a number of essays, which are kind of free-standing and not so coherent. So don't buy this book for a narrative of the world economy during the last 2,000 years. Buy the book for its statistics. If you don't need the statistics, don't buy the book.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent studies in economic history, September 8, 2009
This review is from: Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History (Paperback)
This is a fascinating and brilliant collection of studies in economic history. In Part 1, he looks at various periods of history. Chapter 1 studies the Roman Empire, then the richest part of the world, and "peninsular Italy and its ruling oligarchy were the main gainers." Chapter 2 looks at the years 1500-1820, at Western Europe's unparalleled progress and the transformation of the Americas.
Chapter 3 examines the West's impact on Asia since 1500, particularly the effects that Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain had on China, India, Indonesia and Japan. Chapter 4 looks at the impact of Islam and Europe on Africa since 1 AD. He notes that North Africa was, from the 1st century until the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, a wealthy part of the Roman Empire.
In Part 2, Maddison looks at the advances in macro-measurement made by William Petty (1623-87), `one of the finest examples of the English Enlightenment', John Graunt (1620-74), the first demographer, and Gregory King (1648-1712) who produced estimates of the population of England and Wales, and of income and expenditure. Maddison shows how the evidence has refuted Kondratiev's notion of long waves and Malthus's dismal scaremongering.
In Part 3, Maddison critiques the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's `Special Report on Emissions Scenarios'. This assumes growth that in the OECD countries (the world's richest countries), income per head 1990 to 2100 would rise between from $19K to $109K, in the former socialist countries from $2.4K to $101K, in Asia from $536 to $72K, and in Africa from $1.6K to $61K. Thus the total GDP of Africa, Latin America and some Middle Eastern oil-producing countries would become far bigger than the OECD countries' total GDP. Maddison comments mildly that this "seems implausible and differs sharply from historical experience."
Yet, as he points out, "This assumption is a major driving force in projected energy use and carbon emissions." On this basis, the IPCC forecast a temperature rise of between 0.5 to 1.30C by 2030. He judges, "In view of my scepticism about the higher IPCC projections of GDP, energy consumption and emissions, the lower end of their temperature projections seems the more plausible."
He also observes that the earth's temperature fell between 1945 and 1976, when we had record GDP growth of more than 4% a year. As he notes, "It is odd that the cooling happened when the pace of world economic growth was a good deal faster than in 1910-45 and 1976-2000."
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Useful; 3.5 Stars, December 30, 2009
This review is from: Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History (Paperback)
A useful set of essays from the distinguished economic historian Angus Maddison. The best parts of this book are the numerous data tables and charts examining various aspects of economic history. Included are essays on the demography and economy of the Roman empire, the revival of the Western European economy in the age of mercantile capitalism, the effects of expanding trade with Europe on Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere, an assessment of the sources of the industrial revolution, an essay on pioneers in demography and accounting for national economic activity, and some projections for the future. Each essay, except the one on the early British pioneers of demography and national economic accounting, are essentially a concise text built around presentation of data on demography, economic activity, trade, etc. A great deal of this data is quite valuable. Estimates of population and trade in the Roman empire, the magnitude of the African slave trades across the Atlantic and to the Moslem world, the amount of silver transferred from Europe (originally from the Western Hemisphere), and many other important features of world economic history are included. These datasets are fascinating reading. The accompanying texts are a bit uneven. Generally, these are solid descriptions of major trends and facts but Maddison is not always a careful writer and some of his facts are wrong. The description of the Roman army, for example, is the army of the late Republic and early Principate, not the army of the later Roman Empire. Another example would be his underestimate of the number of deaths associated with the failure of the coup attempt in mid-1960s Indonesia. In some of his discussions of controversial issues, such as the origins of the industrial revolution, I'm not sure he is fair to some of the people he criticizes and he may exaggerate the differences between western Europe and China in some respects. His discussion of global warming is relatively superficial and he gives too much weight to skepticism about IPCC estimates of CO2 release and its probable effects. In fact, these estimates have been generally conservative underestimates. For a recent concise overview of this topic, see the recent article by James McCarthy in Science and for a good discussion of the economics, see the recent book by Nicholas Stern.
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