The Great Divergence, Long-run Growth and Unified Theories of Economic Growth

Per capita income has been close to subsistence levels for almost all of human history. This pattern was
broken in Western Europe during the 19th century. This project uses one millennium of data on innovations,
technology, research effort, income, human capital, fertility, and various qualitative indicators to empirically
and theoretically examine whether the Malthusian mechanism accounts for the epoch of stagnation that
characterised most of human history, the role of technology and knowledge production in explaining
economic growth, the significant widening of the income gap between the rich and poor over the past 200
years, and how technology and knowledge was transmitted internationally over the last millennium.