Capital, Investment, and Innovation in the Roman World

Abstract

Investment in capital, both physical and financial, and innovation in its uses are often considered the linchpins of modern economic growth, while credit and credit markets now seem to determine the wealth—as well as the fate—of nations. This book asks whether it always thus, and whether the Roman economy—large, complex, and sophisticated as it was— looked anything like today’s economies in terms of its structural properties. Through consideration of the allocation and uses of capital and credit and the role of innovation in the Roman world, the contributors to this volume go to the heart of the matter. How was capital in its various forms generated, allocated, and employed in the Roman economy? Did the Romans have markets for capital goods and credit? Did investment in capital lead to innovation and productivity growth? The authors consider multiple aspects of capital use in agriculture, water management, trade, and urban production, and of credit provision, finance, and human capital in different periods of Roman history, in Italy and elsewhere in the Roman world. Using many different types of written and archaeological evidence, and employing a range of modern theoretical perspectives and methodologies, the contributors, an international team of historians and archaeologists, have produced the first book-length contribution to focus exclusively on (physical and financial) capital in the Roman world, a volume that is aimed at experts in the field as well as at economic historians and archaeologists specializing in other periods and places.