Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 BC?

The emphasis of economic development practitioners and researchers is on modern determinants of per capita income such as quality of institutions to support markets, economic policies chosen by governments, human capital components such as education and health, or political factors such as violence and instability. Could this discussion be missing an important, much more long-run dimension to economic development? To the extent that history is discussed at all in economic development, it is usually either the divergence associated with the Industrial Revolution (e.g., Robert Lucas 2000) or the effects of the colonial regimes. Is it possible that history as old as 1500 AD or older also matters significantly for today’s national economic development? A small body of previous growth literature also considers very long run factors in economic development (Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor 2008; Valerie Bockstette, Areendam Chanda, and Louis Putterman 2002; Galor and David N. Weil 2000; Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales 2008; Charles Jones 2001; Michael Kremer 1993; Putterman and Weil 2008; Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg 2009; and Guido Tabellini 2007). This paper explores these questions both empirically and theoretically. To this end, we assemble a new dataset on the history of technology over 2,500 years of history prior to the era of colonization and extensive European contacts. This is