Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

The Industrial Revolution, spanning from 1252 to 1652, witnessed a compound annual growth rate of per capita real GDP in the UK of approximately 0.07%. However, this rate surged to around 1.02% by 1850 and remained steady until 1913. This marks a 15-fold acceleration in growth, which proponents argue suggests that explosive growth of 10 times or more could occur today. Yet, this analogy is misleading.

To validate this claim, the author examines two aspects: first, the commonality of such growth surges in the past, and second, the contemporary growth dynamics. Focusing on growth over 20-year periods, about 46% of these periods exhibited growth exceeding 10 times the long-run average. Across eight modern analogue countries, 19% of country-years had growth surpassing 10 times their baseline growth rate between 1986 and 2022.

This suggests that while a 10x acceleration is possible, it does not imply it was a common occurrence in the past.