IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0032.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Soldiers and booze: The rise and decline of a Roman market economy in north-western Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Eltjo Buringh
  • Jan Luiten van Zanden
  • Maarten Bosker

    (Universiteit Utrecht and Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Abstract

This study quantifies the importance of the Roman military for the development of a market economy in north-western Europe. Distributions of low denomination coins show how the Roman arrival kick-started a local market economy. Additionally settlement densities of fluvial catchments are used as a proxy for economic development. Our newly constructed dataset of settlement sizes shows a high correlation with Roman military requirements. After the demise of the empire the local market economy faded away. This antique market economy had a different geographical distribution than its medieval successor, which was not mainly driven by military demand.

Suggested Citation

  • Eltjo Buringh & Jan Luiten van Zanden & Maarten Bosker, 2012. "Soldiers and booze: The rise and decline of a Roman market economy in north-western Europe," Working Papers 0032, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucg:wpaper:0032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cgeh.nl/sites/default/files/WorkingPapers/CGEH%20WP%20No32%20Buringh%20vanZanden%20Bosker.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. L. De Benedictis & V. Licio & Am Pinna, 2018. "The long-term effects of the historical Roman road network: trade costs of Italian provinces," Working Paper CRENoS 201801, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    2. Wahl, Fabian, 2015. "The long shadow of history: Roman legacy and economic development - evidence from the German limes," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 08-2015, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    3. Vania Licio, 2021. "When History Leaves a Mark: A New Measure of Roman Roads," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 7(1), pages 1-35, March.
    4. Fabian Wahl, 2017. "Does European development have Roman roots? Evidence from the German Limes," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 313-349, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    market economy; historical development; Roman Empire; north-western Europe; inland waterway transport; coin finds;
    All these keywords.

    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:ucg:wpaper:0032. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sarah Carmichael (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgeuunl.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.