In the last two decades, an increasing amount of papyrological findings have begun to shed more light on the demographic and economic consequences of the Antonine Plague in Roman Egypt. However, both results and conclusions on this subject remain quite controversial. This paper reinterprets the...

For scholars seeking to understand political transitions, ancient Greece – the birthplace of democracy and home to dynamic political entrepreneurs – represents a potentially invaluable source of information. Until recently, however, that information was too dispersed topermit systematic...

The most spectacular and attractive items of personal adornment of people is jewellery. The colour, brightness, lasting value, and the scarcity of the materials for these specialties, jewelleries attract man. From the hoary past, men used jewellery made of various materials. Various parts of the...

We identify an ambiguity surrounding institutions and entrepreneurship. While entrepreneurship creates social value at the economy level in the appropriate institutional environment, individual entrepreneurs may create or destroy value in any institutional environment. This raises the question:...

The paper seeks to throw light at two discrete phenomena that were deemed as decisive for the development of the ancient Hellenic world and for urbanization in that part of the world via the emergence of sovereign urban entities, the Greek poleis. Although distinct, they are two conceptually and...

What caused the rise of ancient Greek city-states? To answer this question, I develop a model that synthesizes neo-institutionalist, neo-physiocrat, and neo-classical theories of development and advances a trade-based explanation consistent with the writing of classicists. Then, with a new...

The establishment of Christianity in the late- and post-Roman world caused an economic as well as a religious revolution, but, while a great deal of attention has been paid to the religious developments of the period, the impact of the establishment of the Church on the economy has attracted...

The article deals with one of the most difficult theoretical problems of legal science - the problem of developing a unified methodological approach to the study of the historically first sources of international law related to the local legal system of Ancient Rome. The subject of the study is...

In 1785, a Frankfurt Jew brought a credit dispute between himself and a local Jewish couple before the Imperial Aulic Council in Vienna. Intra-Jewish cases were often appealed to the Council, but here the plaintiff argued the suit should be decided based on Jewish law and the Imperial Aulic...

Did long-distance trade in the Roman world operate on a sufficiently big scale to increase the overall size of markets, enabling specialization of labor and thus Smithian growth? Although the Malthusian model represents the dominant view to describe the economic performance of the ancient world,...

This examination of non-slave labour in Spain complements existing studies on Italy, Gaul and Africa, and thus fills an urgent gap in our understanding of the Roman economy while providing a basis for comparison with the other western provinces. The role of Hispano-Roman non-slave labour in all...

As the Sino-U.S. relationship goes on a downward spiral, increasingly more strange things have come out to haunt the two biggest economies in the world. One of these things involves the idea to make China pay for the sovereign bonds issued by its predeceasing regimes almost a century ago. This...

The Silk Roads were a decentralized network of trade routes that connected ancient cities across Eurasia. Goods, ideas, people, and technology moved along the roads for over 1,500 years. Using a detailed georeferenced map of the entire trade network, this paper finds that areas within 50 KM of...

Researchers increasingly recognize that entrepreneurial employees, intrapreneurs, play a critical role in innovation. As with regular entrepreneurship, however, the value of intrapreneurial activity depends on the firm-specific and societal reward structures that intrapreneurs face. Ideally,...

Over the last 60 years, much analytical research has sought to determine the ore sources of ancient Greek silver artefacts. Lead isotopic analysis has played a key role in this. Most studies have limited their search to places mentioned in historical sources. This study takes a different...

The sector of tourism is a leading service sector according to the BoP methodology. Nowadays, not only has Covid-19 put the sector to the test, but many economic operators claim that they need for government support measures. Therefore, a strategic transformation of the tourism sector during and...

Recent scholarship contends that ancient Mediterranean economies grew intensively, contrary to standard Malthusian predictions. An explanation is Smithian growth spurred by reductions in transaction costs and increased trade flows. This paper argues that an ancient Greek institution, proxenia,...

We use archaeological data from ancient settlements of three different historical eras on a Greek island to construct novel measures of consumption. Using these, we show that luxury good consumption was higher closer to the center of nucleated settlements but shows no such pattern in a placebo...

By analyzing the case of Athens during the Classical period (508-323 BCE) the main thesis of this paper is that under direct democracy procedures and the related institutional setup, a monetary system without a Central Bank may function relatively well. We focus on the following issues: (i) Τhe...

A region's present-day economic performance can be deeply anchored in historical factors. We provide the first systematic evidence of a deep imprinting effect in the context of Roman rule in the south-western part of Germany nearly 2,000 years ago. Our analysis reveals that regions in the former...

Demosthenes (382-322 BC) wrote numerous legal speeches, which provide a plethora of cues about public and private law in Athens during the 4th century BC. In his speech “Paragraphe pros Pantaineton”, Demosthenes described a complex financial transaction composed of a sale, a lease, and a...

It is generally believed that the systematic study of economics and its principles was started in 1776 with the publication of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, who has been universally held as the founding father of economics. Prior to Adam Smith,...

Introduction (Martin Lutz and Tanja Skambraks) -- Part 1: Antiquity and Middle Ages -- Chapter 1.The Popular Morality of Ancient Greek Commerce (Moritz Hinsch) -- Chapter 2. Early medieval property transfers in favour of the church between religion and economy (Franziska Quaas) -- Chapter 3....

"This volume reconsiders the economic history of the ancient and late ancient Mediterranean and Near East from the perspective of David Graeber's anthropological theory. It pursues two purposes. On the one hand, it tests the accuracy of the grand narrative put forward in his 2011 monograph Debt:...