A QUANTITATIVE EXPLORATION OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF EUROPEAN GROWTH: STRUCTURAL CHANGE, PUBLIC INVESTMENT, THE MARSHALL PLAN AND INTRA-EUROPEAN TRADE

Western European income per capita more than tripled in the two and a half decades that followed World War II. The scholarship has identified several potential factors behind this outstanding growth episode, specifically; the large migrations from agriculture to manufacture that took place in post-war Europe, the contribution of the Marshall Plan combined with the public provision of infrastructure and the surge of intra-European trade. This paper can be viewed as an attempt to formalize and quantify the direct contribution of these factors to the outstanding growth of the European Golden Age. Our conclusions highlight their limitations to fully account for that growth experience.