ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on issues of measuring economic performance, focusing on real wages and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It explores why the divergence between the eastern part of Europe and North-Western Europe occurred. The GDP per capita data tend to support the pessimistic interpretation of economic performance in Central and South-Eastern Europe during the early modern period derived from the welfare ratios based on the respectability basket. One of the simplest and most intuitive ways of comparing material standards of living in different places and different periods of time is to measure wages and the amount of goods and services that they can purchase. The silver wage, or daily nominal wage represented in terms of its intrinsic silver content, has commonly been used to compare material standards of living around Europe. The historiography suggests many potential explanations of the Divergence in development levels between the West and the East of Europe during the early modern period.
