Coin quality, coin quantity, and coin value in early China and the Roman world
How was the valuation of ancient coins related to their quality and quantity? How did ancient economies respond to coin debasement and to sharp increases in the money supply relative to the number of goods and transactions? I argue that the same answer – that the result was a devaluation of the coinage in real terms, most commonly leading to price increases – applies to two ostensibly quite different monetary systems, those of early China and the Roman Empire.
Real wages in early economies: Evidence for living standards from 1800 BCE to 1300 CE
In this paper, I present a critical survey of pertinent data from antiquity and the early and high Middle Ages. This broadened perspective expands the chronological scope of the historical study of real incomes of unskilled workers from a few centuries to up to four millennia and at least in a few cases enables us to trace contours of change in the very long run.
Land tenure, rural space, and the political economy of Ptolemaic Egypt (332 BC-30 BC)
In this paper I argue that statist (or “despotic”) assumptions of royal power does not adequately describe the nature of political power in the Ptolemaic development of Egypt. I examine the process of Ptolemaic state formation from the point of view of the expansion and the settlement of the Fayyum, the foundation of Ptolemais in the Thebaid, and from the point of view of new fiscal institutions.
The Ethics and Economics of Ptolemaic Religious Associations
The first part investigates the economic status of the members…In the second part, the rules are examined in more detail in search of economic incentives that might explain why people joined associations..In the third part, a different approach is presented that tries to understand how the rules correspond to actual social relations.
The comparative economics of slavery in the Greco-Roman world
This paper has two goals. The first one is to improve our understanding of the critical determinants of the large-scale use of slave labor in different sectors of historical economies…My second objective is to explain differences in the relative prevalence of chattel slavery in different periods and parts of the ancient Mediterranean world with the help of data on prices and wages…
The eighth-century revolution
Ever since a post-Mycenaean Dark Age was defined in the 1890s, archaeologists have seen the eighth century as the beginning of a revival from it. In the first archaeological synthesis of early Greek history, Starr suggested that ‘the age of revolution, 750-650, was the most dramatic development in all Greek history’…
The Athenian Empire (478-404 BC)
In this paper I raise 3 questions: (1) How, and how much, did the Athenian Empire change Greek society? (2) Why did the Athenian Empire (or a competitor state) not become a multiethnic empire like Persia or Rome? (3) In the long run, how much did the Athenian Empire’s failure matter?
The collapse and regeneration of complex society in Greece, 1500-500 BC
Greece between 1500 and 500 BC is one of the best known examples of the phenomenon of the regeneration of complex society after a collapse. I review 10 core dimensions of this process (urbanism, tax and rent, monuments, elite power, information- recording systems, trade, crafts, military power, scale, and standards of living), and suggest that punctuated equilibrium models accommodate the data better than gradualist interpretations.
Going with the Grain: Athenian State Formation and the Question of Subsistence in the 5th and 4th Centuries BCE
The questions I intend to ask in this paper focus on this very issue. My case study is 5th century BCE Athens. During this period, the so-called “Athenian Empire”, Athens experienced military growth, geographic expansion of its hegemony, and further population increase.
Texts, contexts, subtexts and interpretative frameworks. Beyond the parochial and toward (dynamic) modeling of the Ptolemaic state and the Ptolemaic economy
My concern in this paper is the historical interpretation of the Greek and demotic documentary papyri of the Ptolemaic period, the role of Archaeology in the context of Ptolemaic economic history, and the application of social science theory towards an understanding of Ptolemaic Egypt.