Entrepreneurship and Market Order: Some Historical Evidence

Values and institutions as determinants of entrepreneurship in ancient Athens

“…We believe that the latter test would be far more informative, and hence far more convincing, about the influence of values and institutions on entrepreneurship. For this reason in Bitros and Karayiannis (2006a) we found that the city-state of Athens applied policies that encouraged metics and slaves to assimilate into the Athenian society through success in business. But in the present paper, aside from being harder to implement, this test would be accompanied by the risk that it might be inconclusive because, as we established in Bitros and Karayiannis (2006b), the moral norms and the institutions in ancient Athens emerged endogenously and were optimally adjusted to address the imbalance between the land and its productivity, on the one hand, and the need to feed the population, on the other 3 .…”

“…The first of them was that entrepreneurs would seek to realize ‘moderate’ profits. The second was that wealth would be spent according to certain ethical and social standards; and the third condition was that the distribution of wealth would not become ‘too unequal’ (Bitros and Karayiannis, 2006a). 32…”

Ocean Shipping: By Far the Best Growth Model for Greece

“…Questions like the above attracted my attention in the context of scientific inquiries into the reasons that might explain the emergence and flourishing of big "Merchant Houses" in the communities of Greek diaspora from the mid-18th century. The results are summarized in Bitros, Minoglou (2006, 2007 and show that a key element was their ability to adapt to changing conditions in international markets so as to maintain their competitiveness. Then, as it is true today, international markets self-regulated in the sense that they created endogenously the rules of acceptable conduct by the participating businesses, as well as the procedures for resolving disputes and imposing the expected penalties on those that deviated.…”