Since the 1980s the debate about economic convergence hasdominated empirical work about the dynamics of growth. Economichistorians have been attracted, in particular, by stories of clubconvergence. However, the analytical foundations of most of the work inthis area have rested on linear, or more...

Economic convergence has emerged as one of the key debates in the theoretical andhistorical literature over the last decade. Galor identified three forms of long run percapita income convergence: absolute convergence, whereby convergence occursindependently of the initial conditions facing each...

In early modern north-western Europe, real wages declined while GDP per capita was on the increase. In contrast, wage growth in Tokugawa Japan went hand in hand with output growth. Based on this finding, the paper revisits Thomas Smith’s thesis on ‘Pre-modern Economic Growth: Japan and the...