J. G. Manning: The Open Sea. The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome.

Warnking, Pascal

doi:10.17104/0017-1417-2023-6-520

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Recent examinations of ancient economies in the Mediterranean and Aegean world, using newer lines of evidence, have shown that economic change did occur in past societies, leading to changes in living standards and productivity (at least for some segments of the population) (33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38). It can thus be concluded that economic growth of some sort did occur in the preindustrial world.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification and measurement of intensive economic growth in a Roman imperial province

Ortman,

Lobo,

Lodwick

et al. 2024

Sci. Adv.

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A key question in economic history is the degree to which preindustrial economies could generate sustained increases in per capita productivity. Previous studies suggest that, in many preindustrial contexts, growth was primarily a consequence of agglomeration. Here, we examine evidence for three different socioeconomic rates that are available from the archaeological record for Roman Britain. We find that all three measures show increasing returns to scale with settlement population, with a common elasticity that is consistent with the expectation from settlement scaling theory. We also identify a pattern of increase in baseline rates, similar to that observed in contemporary societies, suggesting that this economy did generate modest levels of per capita productivity growth over a four-century period. Last, we suggest that the observed growth is attributable to changes in transportation costs and to institutions and technologies related to socioeconomic interchange. These findings reinforce the view that differences between ancient and contemporary economies are more a matter of degree than kind.

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