Angus Maddison

British economic historian (1926–2010); long-associated with the OECD Development Centre and the University of Groningen; founding figure of the systematic cross-country long-run economic-history reconstruction project that bears his name. Across a sequence of books (Monitoring the World Economy 1820–1992 (1995), The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (2001), The World Economy: Historical Statistics (2003), Contours of the World Economy 1–2030 AD (2007)), Maddison built the estimation framework and specific country-level GDP-per-capita series that made systematic long-run global comparison possible for the first time.

After his death in 2010, his work was institutionalized as the Maddison Project Database, coordinated at Groningen and updated at irregular intervals (2010, 2013, 2018, 2020, 2023) with substantial revisions to pre-1820 country-level estimates as new source-based reconstructions (Broadberry for Britain, Broadberry-Guan-Li for China, Broadberry-Gupta for India) become available. Maddison’s original estimates have been progressively replaced for specific countries but the overall framework and methodology remain the field’s standard reference point.

Associated positions

• Not a proponent of any single causal position; Maddison’s contribution is the quantitative baseline against which all IR and GD causal arguments are tested. His own interpretive framework in Contours (2007) aligns roughly with the institutional / useful-knowledge tradition.

Key works

• Monitoring the World Economy, 1820–1992 (OECD, 1995).
• The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (OECD, 2001).
• The World Economy: Historical Statistics (OECD, 2003).
• Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History (Oxford, 2007).