eBook

The Roman Market Economy

Peter Temin

2012,2013

Overview

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 Economyuses 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 Economyreveals how economics can help us understand how the Roman Empire could have ruled seventy million people and endured for centuries.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press,Princeton Univ. Press
• Subject: Accounting / Adverse selection / Agriculture / Altertum / Ancient / Ancient history / Antonine Plague / Banking / BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History / Calculation / Commerce / Commodity / Comparative advantage / Consumer / Currency / Demand curve / Denarius / Developed country / Diocletian / Economic conditions / Economic growth / Economic History / Economic interventionism / Economic law / Economic policy / Economics / Economist / Economy / Employment / Factors of production / Financial intermediary / Freedman / Grain trade / HISTORY / HISTORY / Ancient / Rome / Household / Incentive / Income / Industrial Revolution / Industrialisation / Inflation / Information asymmetry / Institution / Interest / Interest rate / International trade / Internationale Wirtschaft / Investor / Italy / Joint-stock company / Land tenure / Long run and short run / Macroeconomics / Manumission / Market economy / Market price / Market regulation / Marktwirtschaft / Measures of national income and output / Microeconomics / New institutional economics / Payment / Population growth / Price Change / Probability / Purchasing power / Quantity / Real wages / Receipt / Relative price / Roman economy / Roman Empire / Roman Government / Roman Italy / Rome / Rome -- Commerce / Rome -- Economic conditions / Rome -- Economic policy / Scarcity / Shortage / Slavery / Standard error / Supply (economics) / Supply and demand / T-statistic / Tax / Tax rate / The Ancient Economy / Trade / Transaction cost / Urbanization / Volkswirtschaft / Wage / Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Year
• ISBN: 9780691147680, 069114768X, 1400845424, 9781400845422