The Labor Market of the Early Roman Empire

@article{Temin2004TheLM,
  title={The Labor Market of the Early Roman Empire},
  author={P. Temin},
  journal={Journal of Interdisciplinary History},
  year={2004},
  volume={34},
  pages={513-538}
}
  • P. Temin
  • Published 2004
  • Economics
  • Journal of Interdisciplinary History
The available evidence on wages and labor contracts supports the existence of a functioning labor market in the early Roman empire, in which workers could change jobs in response to market-driven rewards. Slaves were included in the general labor market because Roman slavery, unlike that in the United States and in Brazil, permitted frequent manumission to citizen status. Slaves' ability to improve their status provided them with incentives to cooperate with their owners and act like free… Expand
View on MIT Press
gretl.ecn.wfu.edu
65 Citations
Background Citations
2

65 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Slave Systems: The comparative economics of slavery in the Greco-Roman world
A comparative perspective improves our understanding of the critical determinants of the largescale use of slave labor in different sectors of historical economies, including classical Greece and the… Expand
Was the Korean Slave Market Efficient
Over the decades, the traditional condemnation of slavery has been based not only on philosophical argumentation and moral values, but also on the conjecture that slavery was inefficient. This… Expand
Keep Them or Free Them : A Contract Theory model about Slaves ’ Manumission
Manumission, the freeing of a slave from bondage, has served as a powerful incentive for slaves throughout history. It was common enough in ancient times that economic historians have gone as far as… Expand
Capitalism and Freedom: Manumissions and the Slave Market in Louisiana, 1725–1820
  • Shawn Cole
  • Political Science, Economics
  • The Journal of Economic History
  • 2005
I use a rich new dataset of Louisiana slave records to answer long-standing questions about manumission. I examine who was manumitted, by whom, and whether manumittees paid prices above market for… Expand
Slavery and Information
This article shows how asymmetric information shaped slavery by determining the likelihood of manumission. A theoretical model explains the need to offer positive incentives to slaves working in… Expand
Law and Finance "at the Origin"
What are the key determinants of financial development and growth? A large literature debates the relative importance of countries' legal and political environment. In this paper, I present evidence… Expand
The dark side of the coin: working families in urban Rome
Roman Economics is a subject area that is fast gaining momentum in the classical world. Although there are numerous studies regarding workers, economics and families, the scholarship is thin when… Expand
Money and finance
The development of Rome and the Roman Empire would have been impossible without the development of money. The introduction of coinage was a direct consequence of Rome's expansion into Italy and soon… Expand
The Economy of the Early Roman Empire
Many inhabitants of ancient Rome lived well. Tourists marvel at the temples, baths, roads and aqueducts that they built. Economists also want to understand the existence of a flourishing and… Expand
Mining Gold for the Currency during the Pax Romana
We set out a simple four sector macro model of the economy of the Roman Empire during a period of considerable economic prosperity. Our focus is on gold coins as currency and the seignorage which the… Expand
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 57 REFERENCES
Slavery and Supervision in Comparative Perspective: A Model
The familiar transaction-costs model is extended to allow for the varying costs and benefits of supervision and pain incentives on the one hand, and ordinary rewards on the other, in differentially… Expand
Does Immigration Grease the Wheels of the Labor Market?
MOST STUDIES OF the economic impact of immigration are motivated by the desire to understand how immigrants affect various dimensions of economic status in the population of the host country. This… Expand
Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century
Introduction: free wage labor in the history of the West Part I. American Contract Labor and English Wage Labor: The Use of Pecuniary and Nonpecuniary Pressure: 1. 'Free' contract labor in the United… Expand
The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870
Examining the emergence of the modern conception of free labor--labor that could not be legally compelled, even though voluntarily agreed upon--Steinfeld explains how English law dominated the early… Expand
Slavery, Incentives, and Manumission: A Theoretical Model
  • R. Findlay
  • Economics
  • Journal of Political Economy
  • 1975
This paper presents a theoretical model of slavery and manumission in which the effective labor provided by slaves is a function of both the level of supervision costs incurred by the owner and the… Expand
Investment, Profit, and Tenancy: The Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy
The economy of the Roman Empire was dominated by the business of agriculture. It employed the vast majority of the Empire's labor force and provided the wealth on which the upper classes depended for… Expand
The great divergence in European wages and prices
This paper traces the history of prices and wages in European cities from the fourteenth century to the First World War. It is shown that the divergence in real incomes observed in the mid-nineteenth… Expand
Time on the cross : the economics of American Negro slavery
This book, originally published in 1974 by Little, Brown and Company, is a sweeping reexamination of the economic foundations of American Negro slavery. Based upon a vast research effort, this volume… Expand
A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire*
  • P. Temin
  • Economics
  • Journal of Roman Studies
  • 2001
The economy of the early Roman Empire has been an object of study for at least the last century. The discussion has been marked by continuing debate, known sometimes as the primitivist/modern debate… Expand
Farm wages and living standards in the Industrial Revolution: England, 1670-1869.
  • G. Clark
  • Economics, Medicine
  • The Economic history review
  • 2001
TLDR
While Bowley's index for the years 1770-1849 is well founded in the years after 1824, for the earlier period it relies on considerable interpolation, and takes no account of manuscript sources that have become available in the past hundred years. Expand
...
1
2
3
4
5
...