Angus Maddison

The death of economic historian Angus Maddison (on 24 April 2010) deserves noting.

In a low-key way, Maddison transformed the economics of growth. The historical statistics he gathered so painstakingly over decades of work gave economists the long runs of data covering many countries needed to test growth theories against the evidence. He paved the way for the recognition of the role of human capital, the phenomenon of conditional convergence, and endogenous growth theory in general. Maddison opens my last book, The Soulful Science, and I included some charming stories about his career taken from an autobiographical essay he wrote. He also gave us the word “chiffrephile”, lover of statistics. There is an obituary by his colleague Bart van Ark available too.

Maddison's own books are available from the OECD Bookshop. Anyone who wants to know GDP per capita in China of 100AD or Portugal in 1485, or Germany in 1870, needs them. The World Economy website describes the work and has a nice dynamic graphic on long run growth.