Has Eastern Europe Always Lagged Behind the West? Historical Evidence from Pre‐1870

The collapse of communism in Central, East and South‐East Europe led to great hopes in the early 1990s. Three decades on, the initial optimism has given way to a mixed assessment: while the political transformation appears irreversible in some countries, a relapse to more authoritarian forms of government has occurred elsewhere. Similarly, the economic catch‐up process takes much longer than originally anticipated. Many of the challenges might not be a legacy of state socialism but could be more deeply rooted. We provide an overview of where quantitative economic history research stands on the origins and persistence of this fundamental West‐East‐divide, focusing on the period before 1870 (by which time income differences were well established). Serfdom was proposed as an early answer. Non‐agricultural explanations fall into three strands: demography, institutional weaknesses, and market access. We briefly discuss to what extent the factors identified here might have generated long‐run stagnation in region.