Provincial Economy

Atomic Dawn has no national economy pool. Every land province on the The Map keeps its own economy, grows it once a month and suffers its own disruptions. A country's GDP, its tax base, its spending budgets and its place in the world rankings are all the sum of what its provinces are producing at that moment.

This makes geography matter. A war fought in your industrial heartland costs far more than one fought in a remote frontier province; a strike in a port city hurts more than one in a farming district; a wealthy province held back by aging machinery can stagnate while a poor neighbour races ahead.

Productivity and output

Each province has two numbers that together make its economy:

• Productivity is what each resident would produce with nothing getting in the way. It is hidden, and it is what grows each month. It sets the province's level of development, what growth its people expect, how fast it urbanizes and which parties it leans towards.
• Economic Output is how much of that potential is actually being realized right now. It starts at 100% and is pulled down by Unrest, Devastation, war exhaustion and naval blockades, and moved up or down by local effects such as strikes or reconstruction works.

A province's GDP per capita is its productivity times its economic output, and its GDP is that times its population. The split is explained in full in Economic Output.

The distinction matters because the two move on very different timescales. Productivity is slow: years of good policy build it, years of neglect erode it. Output is fast: an uprising or a bombing campaign wipes it out immediately, and peace restores it just as quickly.

What makes a province grow

Each month a province's productivity grows by an amount set by its total Economic Growth modifier. A neutral modifier of 0% gives 1% growth a year; +100% doubles that to 2%; -100% means no growth at all; and anything lower is a contraction. The modifier is the sum of:

Development

Development is measured against a baseline of $8,000 of productivity per resident (in 1990 dollars). A province below the baseline gets a bonus in proportion to how far behind it is; a province above it takes a matching penalty, capped at 200% either way. A province at $2,000 per resident gains +75%; one at $16,000 takes -100% and stops growing unless policy pushes it on.

The practical effect is convergence: poor countries can grow quickly if they keep the peace and keep their policies sound, while rich countries need deliberate pro-growth policy just to keep moving. A wealthy province with weak national policy and obsolete equipment can tip into stagnation or outright recession, and being rich does not protect it.

The province view shows the result as its own Economic Growth figure beside GDP per capita, and its tooltip itemizes every contributing source.

Growth and unrest

A province's people expect the growth that is normal for its level of development: the rate it would reach with modern equipment and no national or local effects. Poor provinces, which catch up quickly, expect fast growth; rich ones expect little.

The gap between expectation and reality is the chief driver of Unrest. Every percentage point of annual growth below what a province expects adds two points of unrest a month, and every point above it takes two away. Stagnation and recession inflame a province, pro-growth policy calms it, and obsolete equipment does both damage at once: it lowers growth without lowering what people expect.

Because expectations follow productivity rather than output, a sudden loss of output (a blackout, an uprising, a battle) is not read as a recession, and its end is not read as a boom. Unrest in turn lowers economic output, so a discontented province collects less tax for its owner.

Taxation, military spending, social relief, government popularity, war exhaustion, faction agitation and garrisoned troops all add their own pressures; the Unrest article covers those.

Disruptions

A province's economy can be knocked off course by several things beyond the owner's policy:

• Devastation from battles, bombing and forceful repression cuts output, slows growth and population, wrecks infrastructure and adds unrest until it heals.
• Famine strikes a whole country at random, more often in countries that have not modernized their agriculture.
• Occupation by an enemy army does not stop a province producing, but its owner collects nothing from it until it is retaken or ceded.
• Blockades of a country's ports lower output in every one of its provinces.
• Regional events, such as strikes, partisan rail sabotage or a general strike in a region, lower output there while they last.

Education

Each province also tracks an Education level from 0% to 100%. A country's education is the population-weighted average of its provinces. Education speeds the country's research, shapes which parties a province favours and feeds into its population growth. It rises each month through national and regional education gain. See Education.

The 1946 starting position

The campaign opens on a world still wrecked by the Second World War. Much of Europe east of the Rhine, the German cities, the western Soviet Union, Japan, the Philippines, Burma and the Chinese war provinces start devastated, the worst-hit cities by 60-80%. Their output and growth are held down until they rebuild, which takes years at the normal pace and can be sped up by foreign reconstruction aid. Most of the world also starts poorly connected: most provinces have no railroad at all.

Where to see it

• The province view's Economy tab shows GDP, GDP per capita, Economic Growth, obsolete equipment, infrastructure and devastation, each with a tooltip breaking down its sources.
• The country view shows totals and averages; clicking a statistic opens its monthly history and a ranked list of the country's provinces.
• Several Map Modes colour the world by GDP per capita, devastation and other economic values.

Related articles

• Economic Output: how output turns productivity into GDP.
• Equipment & Modernization: the slow cost of aging capital.
• Infrastructure: railroads and roads.
• Money & the Budget: how provincial GDP becomes national revenue.