IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/363.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Prosperous were the Romans? Evidence from Diocletian`s Price Edict (301 AD)

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Allen
  • Robert C. Allen

Abstract

The paper compares the standard of living of labourers in the Roman Empire in 301 AD with the standard of living of labourers in Europe and Asia from the middle ages to the industrial revolution. Roman data are drawn from Diocletian`s Price Edict. The real wage of Roman workers was like that of their counterparts in the lagging parts of Europe and much of Asia in the middle of the eighteenth century. Roman workers earned just enough to buy a minimal subsistence consumption basket. Real wages were considerably higher in the advanced parts of Europe in the eighteenth century, as they had been in Europe generally following the Black Death in 1348-9.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Allen & Robert C. Allen, 2007. "How Prosperous were the Romans? Evidence from Diocletian`s Price Edict (301 AD)," Economics Series Working Papers 363, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:363
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:069522df-a172-4bcf-9cec-7f1be2687908
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Pascal Bassino & Debin Ma, 2006. "Japanese Unskilled Wages in International Perspective, 1741–1913," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, pages 229-248, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    2. Raymond W. Goldsmith, 1984. "An Estimate Of The Size Anl Structure Of The National Product Of The Early Roman Empire," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 30(3), pages 263-288, September.
    3. Koepke, Nikola & Baten, Joerg, 2005. "The biological standard of living in Europe during the last two millennia," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 61-95, April.
    4. Allen, Robert C., 2001. "The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 411-447, October.
    5. Özmucur, Süleyman & Pamuk, Şevket, 2002. "Real Wages And Standards Of Living In The Ottoman Empire, 1489–1914," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(2), pages 293-321, June.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James Robinson, 2005. "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 546-579, June.
    7. Scheidel,Walter & Morris,Ian & Saller,Richard P. (ed.), 2007. "The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521780537, November.
    8. Goldsmith, Raymond W, 1984. "An Estimate of the Size and Structure of the National Product of the Early Roman Empire," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 30(3), pages 263-288, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. links for 2010-02-11
      by Brad DeLong in Grasping Reality with the Invisible Hand on 2010-02-11 14:05:21

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Orley Ashenfelter, 2012. "Comparing Real Wage Rates: Presidential Address," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 617-642, April.
    2. Robert Allen & Robert C. Allen, 2011. "Technology and the Great Divergence," Economics Series Working Papers 548, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Ashenfelter, Orley, 2012. "Comparing Real Wage Rates," IZA Discussion Papers 6500, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Adam Izdebski & Tymon Słoczyński & Anton Bonnier & Grzegorz Koloch & Katerina Kouli, 2020. "Landscape Change and Trade in Ancient Greece: Evidence from Pollen Data," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(632), pages 2596-2618.
    5. Remi Jedwab & Dietrich Vollrath, 2019. "The Urban Mortality Transition and Poor-Country Urbanization," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 223-275, January.
    6. Baomin Dong & Jiong Gong & Kaixiang Peng & Zhongxiu Zhao, 2015. "Little Divergence: Evidence from Cotton Textiles in Japan and China 1868–1930," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 776-796, November.
    7. Milanovic, Branko, 2010. "Income level and income inequality in the Euro-Mediterranean region: from the Principate to the Islamic conquest," MPRA Paper 46640, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Doug Jones, 2021. "Barbarigenesis and the collapse of complex societies: Rome and after," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-33, September.
    9. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01t435gd01h is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chor, Davin, 2005. "Institutions, wages, and inequality: The case of Europe and its periphery (1500-1899)," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 547-566, October.
    2. Milanovic,Branko & Lindert, Peter H. & Williamson, Jeffrey G., 2007. "Measuring ancient inequality," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4412, The World Bank.
    3. Peter Temin, 2006. "The Economy of the Early Roman Empire," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 133-151, Winter.
    4. Robert C. Allen, 2007. "Economics, science, and the British industrial revolution," Working Papers 7004, Economic History Society.
    5. Doug Jones, 2021. "Barbarigenesis and the collapse of complex societies: Rome and after," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-33, September.
    6. Rafael Gonzalez-Val & David Cuberes, 2013. "History and Urban Primacy: The Effect of the Spanish Reconquista on Muslim Cities," ERSA conference papers ersa13p60, European Regional Science Association.
    7. Boško Mijatović & Branko Milanović, 2021. "The real urban wage in an agricultural economy without landless farmers: Serbia, 1862–1910," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 74(2), pages 424-448, May.
    8. Alfani, Guido & Ryckbosch, Wouter, 2016. "Growing apart in early modern Europe? A comparison of inequality trends in Italy and the Low Countries, 1500–1800," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 143-153.
    9. Ewout Frankema & Marlous van Waijenburg, 2011. "African Real Wages in Asian Perspective, 1880-1940," Working Papers 0002, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    10. Stegl, Mojgan & Baten, Joerg, 2009. "Tall and shrinking Muslims, short and growing Europeans: The long-run welfare development of the Middle East, 1850-1980," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 132-148, January.
    11. Broadberry, Stephen & Ghosal, Sayantan & Proto, Eugenio, 2017. "Anonymity, efficiency wages and technological progress," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 379-394.
    12. Haddad, Eduardo & Araújo, Inácio, 2022. "Regional Science Meets the Past: What Do Coin Finds Tell Us About the Ancient Spatial Economy?," TD NEREUS 2-2022, Núcleo de Economia Regional e Urbana da Universidade de São Paulo (NEREUS).
    13. Broadberry, Stephen & Ghosal, Sayantan & Proto, Eugenio, 2011. "Is Anonymity the Missing Link Between Commercial and Industrial Revolution?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 974, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    14. Broadberry Stephen, 2012. "Recent Developments in the Theory of Very Long Run Growth: A Historical Appraisal," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, De Gruyter, vol. 53(1), pages 277-306, May.
    15. Leticia Arroyo Abad & Nuno Palma, 2020. "The Fruits of El Dorado: The Global Impact of American Precious Metals," Working Papers 0179, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    16. Robert C. Allen & Jean-Pascal Bassino & Debin Ma & Christine Moll-Murata & Jan Luiten Van Zanden, 2011. "Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64, pages 8-38, February.
    17. Jane Humphries & Jacob Weisdorf, 2019. "Unreal Wages? Real Income and Economic Growth in England, 1260–1850," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(623), pages 2867-2887.
    18. Meissner, Christopher M., 2014. "Growth from Globalization? A View from the Very Long Run," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 8, pages 1033-1069, Elsevier.
    19. David Cuberes & Rafael González-Val, 2017. "The effect of the Spanish Reconquest on Iberian cities," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 58(3), pages 375-416, May.
    20. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James Robinson, 2005. "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 546-579, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Standard of Living; Real Wage; Roman Empire; Long Run Economic Growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:363. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.