AI just traced Europe’s wealth gap back to the year 700—the rich and poor areas today were basically decided 1,300 years ago.
March 20, 2026
Original Paper
The Origins of Modern European Economic Geography: Evidence from a Machine Learning Reconstruction of Regional GDP, 700-2000
SSRN · 6341378
The Takeaway
While we often credit the Industrial Revolution or modern policy for current wealth patterns, this reconstruction shows that regional economic geography is incredibly sticky. The map of which European regions are rich or poor was largely determined over a millennium ago, long before the rise of modern states.
From the abstract
Understanding the historical evolution of economic development is essential for analysing long-run growth dynamics and persistent regional inequalities. This paper presents a unified reconstruction of European regional GDP per capita from 700 to 2000, utilising a machine-learning framework that integrates a diverse range of historical proxies within a single empirical model. The approach generates consistent long-run estimates that can reproduce both historically documented economic patterns and