Commercial Amphoras: The Earliest Consumer Packages?
This article presents the hypothesis that the ancient commercial amphora was not only a very well-designed shipping container, but it may have been the first “consumer package” as well.
A comparative perspective on the determinants of the scale and productivity of maritime trade in the Roman Mediterranean
The scale and productivity of maritime trade is a function of environmental conditions, political processes and economic development that determine demand, and more specifically of trading costs.
Greco-Roman sex ratios and femicide in comparative perspective
Is it possible to demonstrate that ancient Greeks or Romans disposed of newborn daughters in ways that skewed sex ratios in favor of males?
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.
New ways of studying incomes in the Roman economy
This paper very briefly considers three ways of expanding the study of Roman income levels beyond the limits of empirical data on costs and wages, by considering the determinants of real incomes, the use of proxy data for real incomes, and the potential of cross-cultural comparison.
Epigraphy and demography: birth, marriage, family, and death
When it comes to ancient demography, documentary evidence takes center stage. Our present focus on epigraphy notwithstanding, it must be stressed that it is papyrology that has made the single most substantial contribution to our understanding of early populations.
A comparative perspective on the determinants of the scale and productivity of maritime trade in the Roman Mediterranean
I argue that imperial state formation was the single most important ultimate determinant of the scale, structure, and productivity of maritime commerce in the Roman period. Hegemony and subsequent direct rule created uniquely favorable conditions for maritime trade by cutting the costs of predation, transactions, and financing to levels that were lower than in any other period of pre-modern Mediterranean history.
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.
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…
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.