Roger Fouquet

Biography

 Roger has been investigating the long run relationship between economic development, energy use and its environmental impacts over the last twenty years, introducing economic history to the analysis of energy issues. A recent article, co-authored with Steve Broadberry, in the Journal of Economic Perspectives presents evidence on very long GDP per capita in a number of European countries. It rejects the argument that these economies were stagnant prior to the Industrial Revolution. Instead, the evidence demonstrates the existence of numerous periods of economic growth before the nineteenth century – unsustained, but raising GDP per capita. It also shows that many of these economies experienced substantial economic decline. Thus, rather than being stagnant, pre-nineteenth century European economies experienced a great deal of change, and implies that recent theories of long run economic growth dependent on the concept of ‘stagnation followed by take-off’ need to be revised.

Research Interest

  The long-run relationships between economic development, energy use and environmental impacts.