Europe's east and Soviet west - the GDP of the Baltic states, 1919-2019

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Historical GDP figures exist for most European economies today. Nevertheless, a unique part of the continent is still largely understudied. Since the collapse of the USSR Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have been successfully converging towards the European average (Staehr 2015, 274). Yet, due to the absence of data, we do not know whether the positive post-independence performance of the Baltic States is a modern phenomenon or rather a consequence of pre-1990 developments.During the DPhil, I hope to undertake the final step in my long-term project of constructing full national accounts for the Baltic States since the end of World War I. My central research question will be, what were the levels of GDP in the three Baltic States since their emergence as modern nation-states in 1918-1919 through the inter-war and Cold war periods until today?The DPhil project will consist of the following three parts: First, drawing on my recent work in constructing the GDP series for inter-war Lithuania, I shall employ the same national accounting procedures to estimate the inter-war income levels for Latvia and Estonia.Second, I shall concentrate on reconstructing the post-1940 GDP time series for all three Baltic States, estimating the 1940-1979 figures, and improving the ones available since 1980.Third, I will present the first comparative analysis of the 100 years of growth of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Eastern Europe.The methodological foundation of this research will be production-side GDP constructions by sector of origin. A separate benchmark will be used for the inter-war period and potentially two for 1940-1990. The figures will be presented and compared in a single GK$1990 series following the latest recommendations by the Maddison project scholars (Bolt and van Zanden 2020, 27).The construction of the first GDP series for all three Baltic States from 1918-1919 to the present will have considerable practical value. The new data may help answer crucial questions about the long-term economic performance in Eastern Europe. Why are the three Baltic States moving together today, although they were so different before 1940? Why did the countries under direct Soviet control (the Baltic States) outperform the semi-independent Communist states like Poland or Hungary? Does the Baltic case give credence to the belief that planned economies can be internationally competitive? What are the lessons of market-planned-market economy transitions that can be drawn from the experience of the most successful examples of such transformations?