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15 results

  • 6 - Contract labor

  • from Part II - Labor
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    08 November 2012, pp 114-130

  • Summary

    The role of slave labor has rightfully been a focus of historians assessing the performance of the Roman economy. But to develop a comprehensive picture of economic relationships in the Roman Empire, one must assess the situation of the empire's vast class of small-scale landowners, tenants, artisans, and people engaging in various forms of wage labor. Often these groups overlapped. So a basic question is the degree to which economic growth in the Roman Empire benefited the vast class of working people in the Roman economy. Did the legal and social institutions surrounding the use of contract labor encourage the efficient use of resources, or did they simply promote the interests of the empire's elite at the expense of the vast majority of its population, including both farmers and urban laborers? As comparisons with later societies will show, it is unlikely that Roman workers ever escaped Malthusian constraints, so that population remained a decisive factor in determining the welfare of workers. In the Roman Empire, workers faced increasing competition as population grew over the first two centuries ce, at least until the Antonine Plague in 165 ce, which apparently caused widespread loss of life and arguably substantial economic disruption. Indeed, documentary papyri from Egypt, which provide some detailed information about wages and prices, suggest that wages and prices remained relatively stable in Egypt until in the 160s ce, when they doubled over a period of thirty years, quite possibly as a result of the loss of population. This sudden change, after a long period of stability, suggests how important population pressure was to the welfare of the empire's workers. After the 190s ce prices and wages remained stable until about 270 ce, when serious inflation set in.

  • 20 - The Early Roman Empire: Production

  • from Part VI - The Early Roman Empire
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 541-569

  • Summary

    Commerce and manufacturing certainly occupied a significant place in the early Roman economy. Large landowners and small farmers depended for their livelihoods on the production of surpluses for the market. In Roman agriculture, most common method for cultivating wheat was the two-field system. The Roman empire also witnessed construction of modest sized-estates which regularly included a pars urbana, an often lavishly adorned farmhouse, and a pars rustica, included farming facilities such as those for pressing grapes. Sometimes, many landowners used the institution of farm tenancy to organize the management and labor on their estates. To answer the question of what extent wealth generated from agriculture contributed to an expansion of production in the non-agricultural sectors of the Roman economy, the economic role of cities in the Roman empire and their relationship with the countryside, has to be evaluated. Archaeological evidence indicates that mining was conducted on a widespread basis in many regions of the Roman empire.

  • 5 - Law and Economic Institutions

  • from Part I - Determinants of Economic Performance
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 113-143

  • Summary

    The landscape of the Greek and Roman economies is invariably configured of individuals, and also of institutions, the organized activity of production and commerce. This chapter explores, within the ancient world, to what extent was economic growth fostered or impeded by the institutional and legal framework within which the Greek and Roman economies operated. The question may be at least formally addressed through modern scholarly methods associated especially with Law and Economics and with the New Institutional Economics. The chapter provides an overview of the methods themselves, and then suggests several ways in which these methods can be applied to come to a deeper understanding of economic organization and the possibilities for economic growth in the Greek and Roman worlds. Adverse selection is an example of how asymmetrical information can affect entry into a market. A cardinal implication of the Coase theorem is that markets cannot and do not exist in isolation from their institutional context.

  • Private and Imperial Management of Roman Estates in North Africa

  • Dennis Kehoe
  • Journal:
    Law and History Review / Volume 2 / Issue 2 / Fall 1984
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 October 2011, pp. 241-263
    Print publication:
    Fall 1984

  • During the second century, North Africa was one of the Roman empire's most important producers of food, supplying perhaps two-thirds of the grain consumed in Rome. In addition, North African olive oil was exported all over the Western Mediterranean. The Roman imperial government took a continuing interest in North Africa's importance as an agricultural center and so maintained control over a large proportion of North African farmland. One of the most important centers for imperial land was the fertile Bagradas valley in northern Tunisia. There, a regulation called the lex Manciana served as a basic lease arrangement for tenants cultivating land on imperial estates. Since the lex Manciana is attested only on North Africa, it seems to have been a regulation designed specifically for the conditions of that region and so represents part of the imperial government's long-term program of exploiting North African farmland.