Growth, development and the potential of Roman collegia

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper seeks to relate proxy indices of economic performance to competing hypotheses of sustainable and unsustainable intensive economic growth in the Roman world. It considers the economic relevance of certain types of archaeological data, the potential of income-centered indices of economic performance, and the complex relationship between economic growth and incomes documented in the more recent past, and concludes with a conjectural argument in support of a Malthusian model of unsustainable economic growth triggered by integration.

H. Platts, J. Pearce, C. Barron, J. Lundock, and J. Yoo, (eds) TRAC 2013. Proceedings of the Twenty-third Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, King's College, London 2013. Oxford: Oxbow Books., 2014

This paper attempts a historiography of the study of the Roman economy over the last forty years. It is argued that a new paradigm, used in the sense of a broad set of values, assumptions and concepts shared by those within the field, began to emerge during the 1980s, reaching its most concrete form in the middle of the last decade with the publication of the Cambridge Economic History of the Graeco-Roman World (Scheidel et al. 2007a). The new paradigm manifests itself most clearly in the adoption of the ideological outlook of development economics, a body of economic theory which first came into being in the immediate post-war period with the ostensible motive of removing poverty from the ‘underdeveloped’ parts of the globe (Escobar 1995: 3–12, 21–54). This adoption has resulted in a shared terminological and conceptual framework between institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, on the one hand (Chomsky 1999; Goldman 2005; Harvey 2005), and historians and archaeologists dealing specifically with questions of Roman economic history on the other (Garnsey and Saller 1987; Jongman 2007b; Saller 2002; Scheidel et al. 2007a).

Bowman, A. K. and Wilson, A. I. “Quantifying the Roman economy: integration, growth, decline?”, in Wilson, A. I. and Bowman, A. K. (eds), Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods and Problems, Oxford Studies in the Roman Economy 1. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2009): 3-84., 2009

Ancient Society, 37, 2007, 191-252

2003

Did a Roman imperial economy exist under the Late Republic, the Roman Principate and the Later Roman Empire? And if so, what type of economy was it? Another equally important question is: did the Roman Empire, by specific actions, the creation of infrastructures, or its very existence, trigger a transformation of economic life in the regions which it dominated? Or was the Empire a marginal affair in the regions that belonged to it, and did economic developments take their own course, independently of the Empire? Questions like these, which are of great consequence to any student of Roman history, archaeology, and Roman law, were at the centre of interest during the second workshop ofthe network Impact ofEmpire 1 • Recent discussion of the Roman imperial economy has been dominated by the controversy between modemists like Michael Rostovtzeff, primitivists like Moses Finley and scholars who take an intermediate position, like Keith Hopkins, with his well-known argument that Roman taxation stimulated trade empire-wide 2 • In reaction to Rostovtzeff's modernistic interpretations 1 We owe thanks to Luuk de Ligt for his advice. This introduction draws heavily on articles by H.W.

Verboven, Koenraad, ed. Complexity Economics: Building a New Approach to Ancient Economic History. Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021., 2021

In terms of the amount and variety of production and energy capture the Roman economic system—encompassing roughly a quarter of the world’s population—was one of the most successful in pre-industrial history. It was matched (probably) by Song China (960–1279) but structurally surpassed only when the combination of science and technology raised the reach of human achievements forever. Through its connections with the outside world—Arabia, Eastern Africa, India, and indirectly China—Rome shaped the first economic world system. Not everyone in the system benefited. Inequality was rampant—with a small “one-percenter” elite, maybe 10 per cent middling groups and a great mass of people hovering slightly above subsistence, like the undergrowth in a forest or occasionally like a dangerous undertow. Scholars usually interpret this success as the outcome of three factors: favourable institutional arrangements (including the Pax Romana) that lowered transaction costs; favourable climatic conditions; and technological innovations such as building concrete or water-powered mills and wheels. Clearly, there were links and cross-overs between these three, but for practical reasons I will address only the first factor: institutions. Rather than look at the effect of institutions on transaction costs, however, as many have done the past twenty-five years or so, I will focus on the relation between institutions and social networks. My aim is to present a framework derived from theories in social sciences to analyse deep institutional change in the Roman empire—not changes in the visible formal institutions, but in the invisible rules that produce the patterns of social life. The first and longest part of this chapter will tie together models in a useful framework. The second part applies these insights to the Roman empire.

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

2015

History is a reality that can be observed only through the traces it has left. Some are words and images (on parchment, papyrus, stone or any other bearer) conveying us the emotions and reflections of people in the past. Others are the scars and leftovers of human lives and actions, scattered in the landscape, buried or sunk under water. Historians and archaeologists are experts in restoring the damage done to a body of evidence by time or human manipulation. We are trained empiricists, wont to look down and think bottom-up. Economic history, however, requires us to do more: we need to look up. Economics is about explaining patterns in human interaction by detecting its causes and effects. However good our restored data are, the patterns they reveal will always be too fragmented and have too many loose ends to unveil reality. Economic history is always an act of imagination. The challenge is to ensure that it does not become an insubstantial pageant. Theories, models and comparative...

Syllabus and plan of the forthcoming course on social and economic history of the Roman Empire - SoSe 2019 University of Tuebingen