Abstract:This chapter analyses the motivations of economic actors in classical Athens from the point of view of modern behavioural economics. The (now) old orthodoxy of M.I. Finley, drawing on Bücher and Weber, stressed that the so‐ called homo economicus did not exist until recent times: in antiquity, an anti‐productive mentality was essentially hard‐wired into the minds of elite Greeks and Romans, preventing economic development. This approach has been widely rejected in recent years, and in particular the methods of… Show more
“…Schefold (2011) maintains that the Athenian economy was neither capitalist nor devoid of capitalistic elements and contends that the modern neoclassical economic theory is at best of limited applicability to ancient Greece. Lewis (2018), without fully abandoning Finley's approach, supports the application of the methodology of New Institutional Economics (NIE) and its emphasis on Transaction Costs and bounded rationality to study the workings of the ancient Greek economy. Stanley (2019) reviews the applicability of the polar distinction between embedded and disembedded to the Athenian economy, and concludes that from the sixth century onwards the Athenian economy most likely combined elements of both.…”
The substantive view of the ancient economy argues that social considerations and especially the quest for status featured prominently in ancient Greece. Paying for liturgies, the private finance of public expenditure by wealthy individuals, offered the opportunity to acquire status by choosing the level of contributions to outperform rival providers. Effectively, liturgies were a system of finance of public provision through redistributive taxation sidestepping state administration of taxes and expenditures. Applying the insights of the economic approach to status, the paper examines status competition in ancient Athens and compares paying for liturgies with a hypothetical system of explicit income taxation of the rich. It is concluded that status seeking increased aggregate provision of public goods. The results formalise important aspects of substantivism and illustrate the value of formal economic analysis in the investigation of the ancient Greek economy.
“…Schefold (2011) maintains that the Athenian economy was neither capitalist nor devoid of capitalistic elements and contends that the modern neoclassical economic theory is at best of limited applicability to ancient Greece. Lewis (2018), without fully abandoning Finley's approach, supports the application of the methodology of New Institutional Economics (NIE) and its emphasis on Transaction Costs and bounded rationality to study the workings of the ancient Greek economy. Stanley (2019) reviews the applicability of the polar distinction between embedded and disembedded to the Athenian economy, and concludes that from the sixth century onwards the Athenian economy most likely combined elements of both.…”
The substantive view of the ancient economy argues that social considerations and especially the quest for status featured prominently in ancient Greece. Paying for liturgies, the private finance of public expenditure by wealthy individuals, offered the opportunity to acquire status by choosing the level of contributions to outperform rival providers. Effectively, liturgies were a system of finance of public provision through redistributive taxation sidestepping state administration of taxes and expenditures. Applying the insights of the economic approach to status, the paper examines status competition in ancient Athens and compares paying for liturgies with a hypothetical system of explicit income taxation of the rich. It is concluded that status seeking increased aggregate provision of public goods. The results formalise important aspects of substantivism and illustrate the value of formal economic analysis in the investigation of the ancient Greek economy.
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