Angus Maddison and Development Economics

This paper was prepared for the Angus Maddison Memorial conference, held in November 2010 at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. The paper reflects on Angus Maddison's contributions to development economics. It focuses on the following issues: 1. quantification in development economics and the framework of proximate and ultimate causality in growth and development; 2 the debate about levels of GDP per capita in the middle of the eighteenth century; 3 Maddison versus the Malthusians; 4 measurement of Chinese Economic Performance in the long run; 5. the impact of Western expansion on the non-Western world and 6. the role of institutions in economic development.