Angus Maddison

Born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, Maddison was educated at Darlington Grammar School and subsequently attended Selwyn College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate. After attending McGill University and Johns Hopkins University as a graduate student, he decided not to pursue a PhD and returned to the United Kingdom to teach for a year at the University of St. Andrews. He subsequently got his doctorate in 1978 at the University of Aix-Marseille in France.{{Cite web |url=http://www.iariw.org/IN%20Memory%20of%20Angus%20Maddison.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=11 December 2014 |archive-date=3 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303210036/http://www.iariw.org/IN%20Memory%20of%20Angus%20Maddison.pdf |url-status=dead }}

In 1953, Maddison joined the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), and afterwards became Head of the OEEC Economics Division. In 1963, after the OEEC became the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Maddison became Assistant Director of the Economic Development Department. In 1966–71 he took leave of absence and spent the next 15 years in a series of consulting appointments during which he returned to the OECD for four years.

File:1700 AD through 2008 AD per capita GDP of China Germany India Japan UK USA per Angus Maddison.png

File:1 AD to 2003 AD Historical Trends in global distribution of GDP China India Western Europe USA Middle East.png

In 1969–1971, Maddison worked at the Development Advisory Service of the Centre for International Affairs. Maddison also held the position of policy advisor for various institutions, including the governments of Ghana and Pakistan. In addition, he visited many other countries and often directly advised the government leaders of countries such as Brazil, Guinea, Mongolia, the USSR and Japan. This enabled him to gain insight into factors that determine economic growth and prosperity.

In 1978, Maddison was appointed historical Professor at the University of Groningen. Maddison was a pioneer in the field of the construction of national accounts, where a country's accounts are calculated back in periods of several decades all the way to the year 1. To this end he combined modern research techniques with his own extensive knowledge of economic history and in particular countries' performances in the field of GDP per capita. His work resulted in a deep new understanding of the reasons why some countries have become rich whereas others have remained poor (or have succumbed to poverty). In this field, Maddison was regarded as the world's most prominent scholar.{{citation needed|date=August 2010}} Maddison's GDP reconstructions have been criticized.{{Cite web|url=https://nofuturepast.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/on-the-discrepancies-between-the-original-maddison-dataset-and-more-recent-gdp-reconstructions/|title=On the discrepancies between the original Maddison dataset and more recent GDP reconstructions|last=npalma|date=2019-05-27|website=Economic Growth in History|language=en|access-date=2019-05-31}}{{Cite journal|last1=Bassino|first1=Jean-Pascal|last2=Eng|first2=Pierre van der|title=Asia's 'little divergence' in the twentieth century: evidence from PPP-based direct estimates of GDP per capita, 1913–69|journal=The Economic History Review|language=en|doi=10.1111/ehr.12880|issn=1468-0289|year=2019|volume=73|pages=185–208|doi-access=}}

In the past two decades, Maddison mainly focussed on the construction of data and analysis further back in time. For example, he published an authoritative study on economic growth in China over the past twenty centuries. This study has strongly boosted the historical debate about the strengths and weaknesses of Europe and China as two of the world's leading economic forces. His estimates regarding the per capita income in the Roman Empire followed up the pioneering work of Keith Hopkins and Raymond W. Goldsmith.{{cite journal |author-link=Walter Scheidel |last1=Scheidel |first1=Walter |last2=Friesen |first2=Steven J. |title=The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire |journal=The Journal of Roman Studies |volume=99 |year=2009 |pages=61–91 [p. 64–72] |jstor=40599740 |doi=10.3815/007543509789745223|s2cid=202968244 |doi-access=free }} He was also author of many works of historical economic analysis, including The World Economy: Historical Statistics and several other reference books on the same topic.

Until the end of his life, Maddison lived in Chevincourt, near Thourotte (France), but maintained strong connections with the University of Groningen. He was the joint founder and intellectual leader of the Groningen Growth and Development Centre,link:[http://www.ggdc.net/ ggdc.net] a research group within the Faculty of Economics in Groningen that focuses on long-term economic growth. The databases maintained by Maddison and his former colleagues, which now include virtually every country in the world, form one of the most important sources for the analysis of long-term economic growth and are used throughout the world by academics and policy analysts.{{Cite web|url=http://www.rug.nl/Corporate/nieuws/maddison|title = University of Groningen - Top 100 University|date = 16 June 2017}}

Maddison received a royal decoration as Commander in the Netherlands Order of Orange Nassau as he turned 80,[http://www.rug.nl/Corporate/nieuws/maddison 113a – Royal Decoration for Angus Maddison] and in October 2007 Maddison received an honorary doctorate at Hitotsubashi University, Japan.

Maddison died on Saturday, 24 April 2010, at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.[http://www.oecd.org/document/22/0,3343,fr_2649_34487_45069206_1_1_1_1,00.html Le Secrétaire général de l'OCDE déplore la mort de l'économiste Angus Maddison], OECD, 26 April 2010 (French) After his death Maddison's exhaustive work quantifying global economic history has been praised as pioneering and important.{{Cite web|url=https://voxeu.org/article/memory-angus-maddison-1926-2010|title=Love affairs with Chinese and Japanese numbers|last=Wu|first=Harry|date=2010-07-28|website=VoxEU.org|access-date=2018-03-23}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/node/16004937|title=Maddison counting|newspaper=The Economist|date=29 April 2010|language=en|access-date=2018-03-23}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/business/01maddison.html|title=Angus Maddison, Economic Historian, Dies at 83|last=Rampell|first=Catherine|date=2010-05-01|work=The New York Times|access-date=2018-03-23|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}

• Paul Bairoch
• List of regions by past GDP (PPP) per capita
• List of regions by past GDP (PPP)
• Maddison Project, a project started in March 2010 to continue the work of Maddison on historical economic statistics after his death

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/ Maddison Project]
• [http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/content.shtml List of works] with some links.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20130127004335/http://www.chinability.com/Chinese%20Economic%20Performance%20in%20the%20Long%20Run.pdf Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run (2007) ] Second edition, revised and updated, 960–2030 AD.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070821055717/http://kosal.us/eminentscientists/Economics/index.htm Short biography]
• [http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/Personal/Autobiog1994.pdf Autobiography (1994)]
• [http://www.theworldeconomy.org The World Economy dedicated website]

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Category:1926 births

Category:2010 deaths

Category:Alumni of Selwyn College, Cambridge

Category:Johns Hopkins University alumni

Category:Harvard University staff

Category:Fellows of Selwyn College, Cambridge

Category:Academic staff of the University of Groningen

Category:Recipients of the Order of Orange-Nassau

Category:21st-century British economists

Category:People from Newcastle upon Tyne

Category:20th-century British economists