主讲人：Liam Brunt（挪威经济学院）

讲座题目：Why Europe and not Asia? Agricultural productivity and industrial revolution around the world before 1870

讲座时间：2016年4月8日09:30-11:30

讲座地点：经济学院1305会议室（学院南路校区）

讲座内容摘要：

Using an extensive and detailed new data set, we estimate agricultural output and productivity around the world in 1705, 1775, 1845 and 1870. We find higher cross-country dispersion and slower productivity growth than Maddison (2006); valuing outputs in $1990 international biases his output growth estimates upward two-fold. China and India were extremely unproductive compared to Europe; over-population (low land-labor ratio) generated this differential. Our indices have statistical confidence intervals—the first of their kind; they are surprisingly tight. Decomposing them into component parts reveals that population and acreage are key to achieving accurate productivity estimates; these are our best-measured variables.