Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C.–A.D. 400)

Hopkins, Keith

doi:10.2307/299558

Cited by 672 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…This appears to be particularly true for seaborne trade. For example, Hopkins (1980) infers from data on 545 dated ancient shipwrecks, found near the coasts of France, Italy, and Spain, that interregional trade was higher in the period from 200 BC to AD 200 than either before or during any time in the following millennium. Analyses of the number of silver coins minted in Rome during the late Republic (157-50 BC) supports this hypothesis: the circulation of coins increased tenfold over that sample period.…”

Section: Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Analyzing historical data on grain prices in Rome, Northern Italy, Sicily, Spain, Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt, they find a strong linear relationship between prices and distance from the production site, which appears to reflect transportation costs and suggests a functioning market and price mechanism. Similarly, Hopkins (1980) uses the spread of silver coins, minted in Rome, across the different regions of the growing Roman state to illustrate its integration into a single monetary economy. He plots the number of catalogued Roman coins found in Southern Germany, Northern Italy, Britain, France, the Balkans, and Syria, over the years AD 50-200.…”

Section: Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Law and Finance “at the Origin”

Malmendier

2009

Journal of Economic Literature

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What are the key determinants of financial development and growth? A large literature debates the relative importance of countries' legal and political environment. In this paper, I present evidence from ancient Rome, where an early form of shareholder company, the societas publicanorum, developed. I show that the societas publicanorum flourished in a legally underdeveloped but politically supportive environment (Roman Republic) and disappeared when Roman law reached its height of legal sophistication but the political environment grew less supportive (Roman Empire). In the Roman case, legal development appears to have mattered little as long as the law as practiced was flexible and adapted to economic needs. The “law as practiced,” in turn, reflected prevalent political interests. After discussing parallels in more recent history, I provide a brief overview of the literature on law and finance and on politics and finance. The historical evidence suggests that legal systems may be less of a technological constraint for growth than previously thought—at least “at the origin.” (JEL D72, K10, N23, N43)

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Section: Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Law and Finance “at the Origin”

Malmendier

2009

Journal of Economic Literature

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“…Ubiquitous amphorae that held olive oil and wine, whose point of origin often can be determined with some precision, give evidence of shipping that spread throughout the Mediterranean, and even more common oil lamps indicate that many similar lamps were produced to extend the Romans' days. The volume of Roman shipwrecks and pollution levels in Greenland ice cores dated to the Roman period provide independent evidence of economic activity in the early Roman Empire by providing evidence of peaks in metallurgical activity (like silver and copper smelting) and maritime trade (Hopkins, 1980; Hong, Candelone, Patterson and Boutron, 1996; Saller, 2002).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Economy of the Early Roman Empire

Temin

2006

Journal of Economic Perspectives

124

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Many inhabitants of ancient Rome lived well. Tourists marvel at the temples, baths, roads and aqueducts that they built. Economists also want to understand the existence of a flourishing and apparently prosperous economy two millennia ago. Market institutions and a stable government appear to have been the combination that produced this remarkable result. This essay provides an economist's view of the Roman economy that emphasizes the role of markets. I focus on the early Roman Empire, from 27 BCE to around 200 CE. I begin with some indications suggesting that the standard of living in ancient Rome was similar to that of early modern period of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, an extraordinary achievement for any economy in the ancient world. I then argue that ancient Rome managed to achieve this high standard of living through the combined operation of moderately stable political conditions and markets for goods, labor and capital, which allowed specialization and efficiency. After surveying the labor and financial markets in turn, I return to the broad questions of how the Romans prospered and the economy appears to have grown.

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“…The level of the extraction of wealth varied significantly between 500 and 1000, with regional differences depending on the strength of royal power or of the aristocracy. Whilst these transfers have been estimated to be around a third of gross agricultural product in the Roman tax system (Hopkins, 1980), a tax rate of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent can be considered for the 500-700 period, for the whole of the West (previously Roman or 'barbarian').…”

Section: Family and External Relations 241 Village Societies And Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family, income and labour around the North Sea, 500–1000

Devroey¹,

Nissen²,

Vanhaute³

et al. 2011

Making a Living: Family, Income and Labour

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From antiquity onwards, north-western Europe was divided into two large bodies, both from an economic and social point of view. The first was constituted, to the south of the Rhine, by the former provinces of the Empire conquered by the Romans at the end of the first century BC and in the first century AD. In the third century Barbarian tribes on the borders of the Roman Empire (the limes) exerted growing pressure on this territory which was expressed in various forms: military raids, then systematic occupation of the territories after the withdrawal of Roman troops (Great Britain, Toxandria), or accommodation, by the infiltration of families or the settling of groups sanctioned by treaties between the Germanic tribes and Romans. Ancient Gaul was totally occupied from the sixth century on by the Franks, who progressively dominated the whole of the Great Northern European plain, towards the east as far as Saxony and to the north as far as the border of Denmark. The second body had as its single common point the fact of never having been conquered by the Romans and consisted of Germanic, Scandinavian and Celtic populations (Wickham, 2010). Within these two zones, peasant families were faced with very different agricultural systems and landownership structures before the Germanic conquest. In Great Britain, the withdrawal of Roman troops was followed in a few decades by the abandoning of earlier forms of ownership and settlement systems. On the continent, the processes were more complex in the sense that the changes which affected the settlement of the countryside could stretch over several centuries and that the new forms of ownership and land occupation resulting from these changes were spread by conquest, from the seventh century, from Frankish Gaul towards the north and the east (Frisia, Saxony), and to the west (the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms) by the influence exerted by Carolingian ideological models (Wickham, 2009). In this chapter, we examine three regions during the early middle ages: 1) north-western Europe under Frankish hegemony (northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and north-west Germany), 2) England, and 3) Scandinavia. These lands were in constant contact through ideological and religious influences, mainly from the Frankish regions, migration, trade flows and wars. The place occupied by the family unit in rural production at the beginning of the period studied is still poorly understood today in terms of the whole of the regions of northern Europe. The study of family morphology and the structures of rural production show that the narrow family group, composed of a couple and their children, became the principal unit of production, reproduction and organisation in the rural society of the West. It took on its fundamental features during the early middle ages at the moment when conjugality became the ideological model spread by Christianity and 1 Our thanks to Chris Wickham and Alexis Wilkin who reads the first drafts.

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Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C.–A.D. 400)

Cited by 672 publications

References 11 publications

Law and Finance “at the Origin”

Law and Finance “at the Origin”

The Economy of the Early Roman Empire

Family, income and labour around the North Sea, 500–1000

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