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This article used to have such a list which was very useful. Could that list be please brought back ? Madmonk11 (talk) 21:45, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
I decided to rewrite and update the whole article for the following reasons:
The new version now lists GDP estimates of the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire and Maddison's estimates as separate entries. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:32, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
I see the British Empire has been removed from the list, yet the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire are mentioned in their own section and the former USSR has its own place in a list. Why are we treating some entities a certain way and not others? BritishWatcher (talk) 12:32, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
Why do we have Total Asia (excl. Japan) but not Total Asia (excl. China and India) when in fact China and India have dominated world GDP for 95% of the past 2000 years. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:17, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Damn, I missed out a very key part of my previous statement, which is that I'm talking about the 1AD figures. So let me rephrase my comment.
According to the figures in 1AD the UK was equally as rich as the US even though we had beasts of burden and were part of a large and fairly well governed empire. Given the US at the time had neither it seems highly unlikely they were as rich per capita as the UK at the time.
Due to that I think that Maddison is just making an educated guess for the US - therefore while the figures for other regions could well be equally dodgy, the figures for China and India could be too low or they could be too high - I don't think the data is accurate enough to really surmise either way. So if he's gone just with Asia ex. Japan then I think we should just go with that. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:17, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
It appears the only estimates available on wikipedia are that of Maddison, which is not exactly the best way to insure balance. For starters, a wide variety of estimates for past GDP (PPP) per capita are avilable (with huge margins of error for all), and it is best to list them all to give readers a balance. For example, the estimates of Bairoch, another economic historian, puts Chinese per capita income in 1800 at a higher level than western Europe, yet Maddison believes Finland, with its self-sufficient Natural economy, had a higher level of GDP per capita than China. Pomeranz's Great Divergence also suggests that Chinese per capita income was at least as much as Western Europe as recent as 1800, but Maddison's estimates are that European per capita income was 3X as much at that date! Another example of astonishingly off statistics would be the aforementioned statistic about American natives having the same GDP per capita as Roman Britain. It seems to be me that these are some pretty wild (and astonishingly inaccurate) guesses.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:55, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
I am a PHD candidate in economics. Although perhaps I am still not qualified to make a scientific estimate of the Roman GDP, I will make one estimate right here for two reasons:
1 - To demonstrate how much some estimates may have underestimated the Roman GDP in comparison to other countries. This would be the upper estimate of the upper range of possible estimates of Roman GDP.
2 - To demonstrate how large is the degree of arbitrariness in ancient GDP estimates. The purpose here is to show how arbitrary these estimates can be.
I know that in wikipedia original research shouldn't be put into the article, but this is in the discussion area.
My estimate is based on the data on the average daily wages for laborers in Roman Italy and other areas like ancient Palestine (according to the bible, a day's wage was 1 denarius, equivalent to 4 sesterces), which was in the area of 4 sesterces a day. Historically, many countries had their per capita incomes in proportion to 200 days of the average wage (particularly European countries in the 16-18th centuries), that's because as workers worked 300-350 day every year and consisted of 40% of the total population, so the per capita supply of work days would be 120-140 days. Since labor usually consists of 60-70% of the national income (the rest being profits, rents and interest), therefore per capita income is proportional to the wages of 200 work days. Therefore Roman per capita income was 800 sesterces. Since the price of wheat was 3 sesterces per modius and a modius had 6.5 kg of wheat, therefore the cost of wheat was 0.46 sesterces per kg. Therefore the per capita income in terms of wheat of the Roman Empire was 1,740 kg. A much higher number than those provided by the Roman GDP estimates in the Roman Economy page.
Since the subsistence income was proportional to 350 kg of wheat, or 160 sesterces, the equivalent to 400, 1990 international dollars (while Goldsmith estimate minimum subsistence at 150 sesterces.), the Roman Empire had a per capita income of 1,990 dollars according to this estimate, much higher than any other per capita income estimate of the Empire produced by these researches. That's mainly because they regarded the 4 sesterces average wage as the income of craftsman and other sub-elite occupations and the not the average income of the general population. They usually use the 4.5 kg of wheat average wage for Egyptian laborers, that would yield a per capita income of 900 kg of wheat, much closer to some estimates. But other evidences indicate that the wages in Egypt were lower than in other parts of the Empire, which explains why Egypt didn't use slave labor in large scale.
Roman population estimates vary from 45 million to 120 million. Using the uppermost estimate, Gibbons classic guesstimate for the empire was 120 million, and applying the 1,990 per capita income on Gibbon's estimate yields a GDP of tremendous 238,800 million 1990 dollars. About the GDP of the world in 1500 or Western Europe in 1820 and 10 times the GDP of Han China. Impossible? Perhaps not, Rome had 1 million inhabitants in the first century, Alexandria had about half million (perhaps a million according to the fact that in 50 BCE the city had 300,000 "citizens", which may mean adult male citizens), London had 960,000 inhabitants in 1800, Paris had 550,000. The two largest cities in Western Europe were the same size as the two largest cities in the Empire.
Also, Roman GDP may have been much larger than Han China's, according to Sheildel: "However, despite these very considerable margins of uncertainty, even the broadest range of guesses for the money stock in Han China of between 6 and 28 billion liters of grain equivalent barely overlaps with the much higher range from 22 to 90 billion liters proposed for the Roman empire.", The Monetary Systems of the Han and Roman Empires, page 52, link: http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/09-07-022.pdf. Therefore the maximum possible difference in size of money stock would imply in a Roman stock 15 times greater than Han China. GDP is very strongly correlated with money stock, though more advanced ancient economies may need a larger money stock to operate because they have greater degree of monetization.
Usually economic historians like Temin and Sheildel deny that the Roman Empire had GDP in these levels based on the conclusion that it would be impossible for it do have developed so much, as they imply that it would be impossible for any other civilization to reach the degree of development of europe in 1800. I think that they are assuming what they need to prove.--RafaelG (talk) 22:19, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
This article is really not the best place for data on present countries. There are numerous other lists for that (see bottom template). The list here firmly focuses on historical economies, where data is most sketchy and scholars commonly need to apply ingenious means to arrive at them. You can't group this 'guessimate' data together with modern reliable statistics of the past three decades, the difference is like night and day. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 21:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
I think it would be interesting to have some information about Argentina, the only country that has gone from being one of the richest in the early 1900s to one of the developing countries in the 2000s. Apparently it is a very unique case:
I hope somebody else can add some information about this in the article (to show an example of a country going from rich to developing). Regards.85.50.203.110 (talk) 22:11, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Gun Powder Ma I don't want to contradict your correction of my "guessimate" data. But if you're as intellectual as your profile suggests I would like you to please add "unguessimate" information so that educational institutions follow updated data. Please do so if you can or otherwise I will keep on re-entering my so called "guessimate" IMF data and you keep on deleting it and so on and so forth, I had entered the data from rounded off IMF and CIA World Factbook figures and since I forgot to include references you erased my independently entered unprotected "raw" data. I don't know who you are but I urge you not to delete the data that I may enter because I am just a high school student and my school's board keeps track of updated data and adds that data in their textbooks and that may affect the youth outlook of my country and several others on a high scale pessimistic extent or a high scale false optimistic extent. For your information, my country is full of realistic critics. Face the facts and accept change because it is inevitable and is also a reality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.200.172 (talk) 14:56, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Can't really say that the recently added boxes with Bairoch's growth figures are an improvement to the article. The layout now looks cluttered and figures three digits behind the comma give the reader a misleading impression of a precision which is not there in theses estimates/guessimates. Transferring the data into graphs may solve this problem, but these boxes are counterproductive. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 14:28, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Moderators, please, pay attention! Someone has more than once incorrectly changed Bairoch's figures for Russian GDP in 1830-1913. I guess, it could be done for ideological reasons - to put the Soviet Union far ahead of Russian empire.
The correct data are: 1830 - 10,550 1840 - 11,200 1850 - 12,700 1860 - 14,400 1870 - 22,920 1880 - 23,250 1890 - 21,180 1900 - 32,000 1910 - 43,830 1913 - 52,420
See source in the JEEH Archive: http://www.jeeh.it/articolo?urn=urn:abi:abi:RIV.JOU:1976;2.273&ev=1
Paul Bairoch, "Europe's Gross National Product: 1800-1975", Journal of European Economic History, #2 (1976), p. 281.
Sincerely, Mindover (talk) 05:49, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
England isn't listed, even tho these stats come from a British source... wtf..? 76.102.26.97 (talk) 21:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I wish the british empire was represented everything always lists british colonies as separate stuff. Uhrfuvf (talk) 16:25, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Os Tubas são um grupo pequeno criado originalmente por duas pessoas e mais 3 membros oficiais sendo eles ( não sabemos os nomes reais deles ) : Dudu, Dio, Edu, Matheus-tytu e Matheus-Pituu Os aliados dos tubas são : Coxinhas e Lulas, ja os inimigos são : Pintinhos Não se sabe muito sobre eles mais eles tem ate um discord, caso queira entrar aqui esta o link do convite : https://discord.gg/d7QttbySvJ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.141.131.242 (talk) 17:26, 14 February 2021 (UTC)