Publication: The great escape? The contribution of the empire to Portugal’s economic growth, 1500-1800
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2013-10-31
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Abstract
Newly assembled macroeconomic statistics for early modern Portugal reveal one
of Europe’s most vigorous colonial traders and at the same time one of its least
successful growth records. Using an estimated model in the spirit of Allen (2009)
we conclude that intercontinental trade had a substantial and increasingly
positive impact on economic growth. In the heyday of colonial expansion,
eliminating the economic links to empire would have reduced Portugal’s per
capita income by roughly a fifth. While the empire helped the domestic economy
it was not sufficient to annul the tendency towards decline in relation to Europe’s
advanced core which set in from the 17th century onwards. We conclude that the
explanation for Portugal’s long-term backwardness must be sought primarily in
domestic conditions
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The European Little Divergence, Early Modern Economic Growth, Economics of Empires