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CAPITALISM IN ANCIENT ROME Rome had a remarkably sophisticated market economy The Roman Market Economy by Peter Temin Princeton University Press, 2012.320 pages
Enthusiasts of Ancient Roman history have long been struck by a peculiar absence. As David Hume wrote, 'I do not remember a passage in any ancient author, where the growth of a city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture.'
Yes, there was much trade in the ancient world. There were markets. But the power of the Roman state and the paucity of evidence for industry, manufacture, and integrated markets has led many historians to conclude, as the great Moses Finley did, that ancient society did not have an economic system which was an ancient conglomeration of markets'
Peter Temin's The Roman Market Economy is a clever, extended attempt to demonstrate otherwise.
Temin, an emeritus professor at MIT, is one of the world's most prominent economic historians. He's written studies on the Great Depression, the economics of slavery, and industrialisation in the United States. One book also published this year by Temin and a co-author, Hans-Joachim Voth, concerns early goldsmith banking in eighteenth century Britain.
In The Roman Market Economy, Temin's goal is to apply the standard techniques and theories of modern economics to the ancient world.
Of course such standard techniques and theories are broadly Keynesian. Their application is usually rewarding, but, as we shall see, occasionally problematic.
Temin offers some tests to determine how much of a market economy Ancient Rome really was. Were the level of prices determined by supply and demand, suggesting that trade dominates the economy? Was there an integrated market-in other words, did a price change in one region effect a price change in another region? And was anonymous exchange common? It's easy to make trades with people we know personally. But were contracts and law-formal and informal-developed enough to facilitate trade among people outside a group of trusted friends?
The questions are hard to answer. Certainly there are no data sets of the sort that economists are used to handling.
The first question is whether Rome was an integrated market, rather than a collection of local markets connected only by politics. We have a small sample of wheat prices from around the Mediterranean...