EDINBURGH — The people of Scotland decide Thursday whether national pride outweighs economic risk.

The vote on independence is taking place without any of the usual factors that drive the dissolution of great nations: no war, no acute economic crisis, no raging territorial dispute. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite: peace, a slowly recovering economy and a central government in London that promises to grant more powers over taxing and spending to the Scottish Parliament.

The Scots cannot claim they have not been warned about the uncertain and even dire economic consequences of splitting from the United Kingdom, on issues like the currency, investment, pensions and declining energy revenues from the North Sea.

Economists normally as ideologically disparate and disputatious as Alan Greenspan, Paul Krugman and Adam S. Posen, as well as the historian Niall Ferguson, who often writes about economics, all have predicted a negative economic outlook for an independent Scotland, while expressing anxiety, too, about the impact of such uncertainty on the larger European and global economies.

Those warnings, echoed by many British leaders and business executives, and traditional feelings of connection and kinship on this island, may narrowly win the day.