Generating the Wealth of Nations 8: Three "Lagging" European Countries

There's no big point here, just a counterpart to the discussion in the third lecture about the differential timing of industrial "take-off" in Europe.  What we have here are three countries that were "lagging" throughout the 19th century--by the beginning of World War II, two of them had GDP per capita lower relative to England than in the early 19th century.  And only Norway had made any (and that only very limited) progress relative to England:

(Click to enlarge.)

By 2010, Norway's real GDP per capita was about 120% of Englands (almost all of the catch-up came post-World-War II), Italy was at about 80% (about where it was in 1820, but down from about 100% in the early 1980s), and Greece was at about 60% (also down from the early 1980s, when they got to 70% of England).  Anyone want to take a shot at explaining this pattern?  I don't.