Ancient Economies

Mostly Greece and Rome. 

Top Picks

• Allen, Robert C. 1997. “Agriculture and the Origins of the State in Ancient Egypt.” Explorations in Economic History 34(2): 135–54.

• Bradley, Keith R. 1994. Slavery and Society at Rome. Cambridge University Press. 

• Finley, M. I. 1999. The Ancient Economy. University of California Press.

• Finley, Moses I. 1983. Politics in the Ancient World. Cambridge University Press.

• Rostovtzeff, Michael Ivanovitch. 1926. The Social & Economic History of the Roman Empire. Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1926. 

• Scheidel, Walter. 2021. Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity. Princeton University Press.

• Morris, Ian, and Walter Scheidel. 2009. The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium. Oxford University Press, USA.

• Temin, Peter. 2013. The Roman Market Economy. Princeton University Press.

• Ekelund, Robert Burton, and Robert D. Tollison. 2011. Economic Origins of Roman Christianity. University of Chicago Press.

Others

• Anderson, Perry. 1996. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. Verso.

• van Bavel, Bas. 2014. “New Perspectives on Factor Markets and Ancient Middle Eastern Economies: A Survey.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57(2): 145–72.

• Bowes, Kim. 2021. “When Kuznets Went to Rome: Roman Economic Well-Being and the Reframing of Roman History.” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 2(1): 7–40.

• Finley, Moses I. 1965. “Technical Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World.” The Economic History Review 18(1): 29–45.

• Greene, Kevin. 2000. “Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World: MI Finley Re-Considered.” Economic history review: 29–59.

• Harper, Kyle. 2016. “People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World: The Evidence from Egypt.” The Journal of Economic History 76(3): 803–39.

• Harris, William Vernon. 2008. The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans. Oxford University Press, USA. 

• Kron, Geoffrey. 2005. “Anthropometry, Physical Anthropology, and the Reconstruction of Ancient Health, Nutrition, and Living Standards.” Historia: Zeitschrift fur Alte Geschichte: 68–83.

• Kron, Geoffrey. 2011. “The Distribution of Wealth at Athens in Comparative Perspective.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik: 129–38.

• Laiou, Angeliki E., and Cécile Morrisson. 2007. The Byzantine Economy. Cambridge University Press.

• Morris, Ian Peter. 2005. “The Collapse and Regeneration of Complex Society in Greece, 1500-500 BC.” Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics Paper (120510).

• Ober, Josiah. 2011. “Wealthy Hellas.” Journal of Economic Asymmetries 8(1): 1–38.

• Ober, Josiah. 2016. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. Princeton University Press.

• Scheidel, Walter. 2007. “From the’Great Convergence’ to the’First Great Divergence’: Roman and Qin-Han State Formation and Its Aftermath.” Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics. 

• Scheidel, Walter. 2008. “Roman Population Size: The Logic of the Debate.” People, land and politics: demographic developments and the transformation of Roman Italy 300: 17–70.

• Scheidel, Walter. 2009. “A Peculiar Institution? Greco–Roman Monogamy in Global Context.” The History of the Family 14(3): 280–91.

• Scheidel, Walter. 2013. “Slavery and Forced Labor in Early China and the Roman World.” Working Paper. 

• Scheidel, Walter, Ian Morris, and Richard P. Saller. 2007. The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge University Press.

• Temin, Peter. 2006. “The Economy of the Early Roman Empire.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20(1): 133–51.

• Ward-Perkins, Bryan. 2006. The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization. OUP Oxford.