IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/46640.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income level and income inequality in the Euro-Mediterranean region: from the Principate to the Islamic conquest

Author

Listed:
  • Milanovic, Branko

Abstract

Was the Euro-Mediterranean region at the time of the Roman empire and its Western successor states, more unequal than the European Union is today? We use some scant evidence on personal income distribution within the Empire and differences in average regional incomes to conclude that the Empire was more homogeneous, in terms of regional incomes, than today's EU, and inter-personal inequality was low. Moreover, income inequality was likely less around year 700 than in Augustus's time. The latter finding contrasts with a view of rising inequality as the Western Roman Empire dissolved.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:46640
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/46640/1/MPRA_paper_46640.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Branko Milanovic, 2006. "An Estimate Of Average Income And Inequality In Byzantium Around Year 1000," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 52(3), pages 449-470, September.
    2. Robert J. Barro, 1998. "Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262522543, April.
    3. 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.
    4. Birdsall, Nancy, 2007. "Reflections on the Macro Foundations of the Middle Class in the Developing World," Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, Working Paper Series qt4nt1n232, Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, UC Santa Cruz.
    5. Williamson, Jeffrey G., 2010. "Five centuries of Latin American income inequality," Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 227-252, September.
    6. 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.
    7. repec:bla:revinw:v:30:y:1984:i:3:p:263-88 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Lambert, Thomas, 2021. "Byzantine Economic Growth: Did Climate Change Play a Role?," MPRA Paper 107898, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Milanovic, Branko & Lindert, Peter & Williamson, Jeffrey, 2007. "Measuring Ancient Inequality," MPRA Paper 5388, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Bleynat, Ingrid & Challú, Amílcar & Segal, Paul, 2020. "Inequality, living standards and growth: two centuries of economic development in Mexico," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 105215, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Ingrid Bleynat & Amílcar E. Challú & Paul Segal, 2021. "Inequality, living standards, and growth: two centuries of economic development in Mexico," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 74(3), pages 584-610, August.
    4. repec:cte:whrepe:wp15-09 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. María Gómez-León, 2015. "The Rise of the Middle Class, Brazil (1839-1950)," Working Papers 0091, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    6. 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.
    7. , Stone Center & Bleynat, Ingrid & Challú, Amílcar & Segal, Paul, 2020. "Inequality, Living Standards and Growth: Two Centuries of Economic Development in Mexico," SocArXiv 9ztb7, Center for Open Science.
    8. Persson, Karl Gunnar, 2008. "The Malthus delusion," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 165-173, August.
    9. Jean-Pascal Bassino & Masanori Takashima, 2014. "Paying the price for spiritual enlightenment: tax pressure and living standards in Kofun and Asuka-Nara, Japan (c.300-794 AD)," Working Papers 14001, Economic History Society.
    10. Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin, 2012. "Electoral conflict and the maturity of local democracy in Indonesia: testing the modernisation hypothesis," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(3), pages 476-497.
    11. Eicher, Theo S. & Schreiber, Till, 2010. "Structural policies and growth: Time series evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 169-179, January.
    12. Kemptner, Daniel & Tolan, Songül, 2018. "The role of time preferences in educational decision making," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 25-39.
    13. Robert MacCulloch & Silvia Pezzini, 2010. "The Roles of Freedom, Growth, and Religion in the Taste for Revolution," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 329-358, May.
    14. Ligia Alba Melo-Becerra & Luis E. Arango & Oscar Iván Ávila-Montealegre & Jhorland Ayala-García & Leonardo Bonilla-Mejía & Jesús Alonso Botero-García & Carolina Crispin-Fory & Manuela Cardona & Daniel, 2023. "Aspectos financieros y fiscales del sistema de salud en Colombia," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, issue 106, pages 1-92, October.
    15. Md. Sharif Hossain & Md. Thasinul Abedin, 2016. "Multivariate Dynamic Co-integration and Causality Analysis between Inflation and its Determinants," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 8(5), pages 240-250.
    16. Aysit Tansel & Nil Demet Güngör, 2016. "Gender Effects of Education on Economic Development in Turkey," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Nadereh Chamlou & Massoud Karshenas (ed.), Women, Work and Welfare in the Middle East and North Africa The Role of Socio-demographics, Entrepreneurship and Public Policies, chapter 3, pages 57-86, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Christopher F Baum & Mustafa Caglayan & Bing Xu, 2017. "The Impact of Uncertainty on Financial Institutions," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 939, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 20 Sep 2018.
    18. Berkowitz, Daniel & DeJong, David N., 2002. "Accounting for growth in post-Soviet Russia," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 221-239, March.
    19. Hannu Tanninen, 1999. "Income inequality, government expenditures and growth," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(9), pages 1109-1117.
    20. Olivier Bruno & Cuong Van & Benoît Masquin, 2009. "When does a developing country use new technologies?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 40(2), pages 275-300, August.
    21. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2009. "Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 88-126, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Roman Empire; inequality; regional gaps; Europe;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N9 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History

    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:pra:mprapa:46640. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.