Temin The Roman Market Economy

Core Textbook
ISBN: 978-1-4008-4542-2
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 71, 320 Seiten, EPUB

Reihe: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World

What modern economics can tell us about ancient Rome

The quality of life for ordinary Roman citizens at the height of the Roman Empire probably was better than that of any other large group of people living before the Industrial Revolution. The Roman Market Economy uses the tools of modern economics to show how trade, markets, and the Pax Romana were critical to ancient Rome's prosperity.

Peter Temin, one of the world's foremost economic historians, argues that markets dominated the Roman economy. He traces how the Pax Romana encouraged trade around the Mediterranean, and how Roman law promoted commerce and banking. Temin shows that a reasonably vibrant market for wheat extended throughout the empire, and suggests that the Antonine Plague may have been responsible for turning the stable prices of the early empire into the persistent inflation of the late. He vividly describes how various markets operated in Roman times, from commodities and slaves to the buying and selling of land. Applying modern methods for evaluating economic growth to data culled from historical sources, Temin argues that Roman Italy in the second century was as prosperous as the Dutch Republic in its golden age of the seventeenth century.

The Roman Market Economy reveals how economics can help us understand how the Roman Empire could have ruled seventy million people and endured for centuries.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Temin, Peter

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike Römische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

1 Economics and Ancient History 1

Introduction: Data and Hypothesis Tests 27

2 Wheat Prices and Trade in the Early Roman Empire 29
3 Price Behavior in Hellenistic Babylon 53

Appendix to Chapter 3 66

4 Price Behavior in the Roman Empire 70

Part II: Markets in the Roman Empire

Introduction: Roman Microeconomics 95
5 The Grain Trade 97
6 The Labor Market 114
7 Land Ownership 139

8 Financial Intermediation 157

Part III: The Roman Economy

Introduction: Roman Macroeconomics 193
9 Growth Theory for Ancient Economies 195

10 Economic Growth in a Malthusian Empire 220

Appendix to Chapter 10 240

11 Per Capita GDP in the Early Roman Empire 243

References 263

Index 289

Über Autor(innen)

Peter Temin is the Gray Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books include The World Economy between the World Wars.