Italy's long‐term economic performance: GDP estimates from 1300 to 1861

Abstract We present new demand‐side estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for Italy and its two macro‐areas, Centre‐North and South, for the pre‐industrial period (1328–1861) on the basis of a novel dataset including almost 100,000 observations from 169 different locations. Our estimates confirm the chronology of the ‘Little Divergence’ relative to the Netherlands and England. Italy maintained its leading position relative to the other European countries and was overtaken by France and Germany only in the first half of the nineteenth century. GDP per capita trends differed between Centre‐North and South determining a ‘slow‐motion’ divergence of the South from the fifteenth century to political unification.