ABSTRACT
Economic growth in terms of substantial and sustained increases in per capita production is a phenomenon that began following the end of the Napoleonic wars in the early nineteenth century. Angus Maddison argues that the economies of Western Europe and what he called their "Western Offshoots" emerged as dominant among the world's economies, a position they—joined much later by Japan—have held since. These countries have passed through four epochs: "agrarianism", "advancing agrarianism", "merchant capitalism" and "capitalism". International trade is a source of benefit to both trading partner economies because it allows specialization by each, and because it has been a source of new products and new ideas. Besides "technological change in the narrow sense", economists initially focused on education, R&D, and other obvious nonmaterial inputs. The relation between security of property rights and economic growth is one with a long history, and one that has successively favored the lead first of the Netherlands, then of England, and the United States.
