Maddison Project Database 2020

The Maddison Project Database provides information on comparative economic growth and income levels over the very long run. The 2020 version of this database covers 169 countries and the period up to 2018. For questions not covered in the documentation, please contact ggdc rug.nl .

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User information

We now offer a new 2020 update of the Maddison Project database, which uses a different methodology compared to the 2018 update. The approach of the 2018 update is identical to that of Penn World Tables, and consistent with recent economic and statistical research in this field. However, applying this approach systematically results in historical outcomes that are not consistent with current insights by economic historians, as explained in Bolt and Van Zanden (2020).

The 2020 update has to some extent gone back to the original Maddison approach to remedy for this (see documentation). Both the 2018 and the 2020 datasets incorporate the available recent work by economic historians on long term economic growth, the 2020 is most complete in this respect.

Attribution requirement -

All original papers must be cited when:

1. the data is shown in any graphical form

2. subsets of the full dataset that include less than a dozen (12) countries are used for statistical analysis or any other purposes

A list of original papers can be found in the source sheet of the database. When neither a) or b) apply, then the MPD as a whole should be cited.

• Maddison Project Database, version 2020. Bolt, Jutta and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2020), “Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy. A new 2020 update ”.

License and funding
Maddison Project Database, version 2020 by Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

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Documentation