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.
Rule and Revenue in Egypt and Rome: Political Stability and Fiscal Institutions
This paper has more modest goals. It takes as its starting point Levi’s hy- pothesis that the transition from the Roman Republic to the Principate in the late first century BC brought political stability, which led to rationally calcu- lated fiscal reforms. It examines the effects of this transition in Egypt where there is abundant evidence due to the survival of administrative and tax docu- ments on papyrus and potsherds.
Communal Agriculture in the Ptolemaic and Roman Fayyum
My approach to land rights is social and economic rather than juristic. In other words, I am not interested in the interpretation of ancient legal terms according to Roman or civil law categories, which risks imposing rigid categories on social relations that have little explanatory power…In this paper, I use the economic concepts of communal and private land rights to illuminate these relations.
The size of the economy and the distribution of income in the Roman Empire
Different ways of estimating the Gross Domestic Product of the Roman Empire in the second century CE produce convergent results that point to total output and consumption equivalent to 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year. It is estimated that elites (around 1.5 per cent of the imperial population) controlled approximately one-fifth of total income while middling households (perhaps 10 percent of the population) consumed another fifth. These findings shed new light on the scale of economic inequality and the distribution of demand in the Roman world.
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.
A Crisis in the Multiethnic Society of Ancient Alexandria (66 A.D.)
My intention is to examine an episode from the first period of Roman domination, when the coexistence between the different ethnic groups in Alexandria (the body of Greek cit- izens, the Egyptian population and the Jewish community) was marked by signs of extreme tension and outbreaks of violence.