Modelling the Quest for Status in Ancient Greece: Paying for Liturgies

Abstract

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.

A Brief Overview of the Political Economy of Ancient Greek Polis and Demokratia

“…Tridimas (2020) examines liturgies as a competitive system between the rich, leading to effective income taxation. The process through which financial decisions were voted has been studied by Tridimas (2013), in the particular case of the attribution of newly found silver in Attic mines to the building of a large combat fleet in 483 BCE. As a consequence of possessing a large war fleet, the Athenian economy evolved from an agrarian type to a maritime and commercially oriented one.…”

Pruning of the People: Ostracism and the Transformation of the Political Space in Ancient Athens

“…The decision to hold an ostrakophoria might have been the "public recognition that something was rotten," but it was by no means a singular "diagnosis of that evil" [32] (p. 142). In this way, ostracism can be described as an expressive political procedure-like an "inverted popularity contest"-that said just as much about who was doing the casting as whom was being cast out [64] (p. 73).…”

“…17), whereas ostraka cast out Megacles for his adultery, land disputes, and personal animosities; Themistocles for his sexual passivity; and Cimon for incest with his sister [17] (pp. [64][65]. In short, ostracism was more than just an anti-tyrannic institution; it also had as its object moral offenses, accusations of corruption, and personal conflicts.…”

Tax In Nusantara: Historical Analysis of The Fiscal Sociology Dynamics

“…Taxes were also developed in other continents. Ancient China, Arab, Greece, Egypt, India and Athens implemented tax as part of their complex finance system to support their political, economic, social and cultural development, as well as to redistribute the wealth (McCannon, 2017;Jia, 2019;Ikromjon, 2020;Olivelle, 2020;Tridimas, 2020;Hao et al, 2021;VerSteeg, 2021). While in ancient India and Turkey, taxes were used in aspiring their religion (Pagel, 2017).…”