R.J. van der Spek, Bas van Leeuwen, Jan Luiten van Zanden (eds.), A History of Market Performance from Ancient Babylonia to the Modern World. London, New York: Routledge 2015 [2014], Aug 21, 2014
This exciting new volume examines the development of market performance from Antiquity until the ... more This exciting new volume examines the development of market performance from Antiquity until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
Efficient market structures are agreed by most economists to serve as evidence of economic prosperity, and to be prerequisites for further economic growth. However, this is the first study to examine market performance as a whole, over such a large time period. Presenting a hitherto unknown and inaccessible corpus of data from ancient Babylonia, this international set of contributors are for the first time able to offer an in-depth study of market performance over a period of 2,500 years.
The contributions focus on the market of staple crops, as they were crucial goods in these societies. Over this entire period, all papers provide a similar conceptual and methodological framework resting on a common definition of market performance combined with qualitative and quantitative analyses resting on new and improved price data. In this way, the book is able to combine analysis of the Babylonian period with similar work on the Roman, Early-and Late Medieval and Early Modern period.
Bringing together input from assyriologists, ancient historians, economic historians and economists, this volume will be crucial reading for all those with an interest in ancient history, economic history and economics.
This is part of a research project conducted at the VU University (Vrije Universiteit) Amsterdam, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) on "The efficiency of markets in Pre-Industrial Societies: the case of Babylonia, 485-61 BC".
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Efficient market structures are agreed by most economists to serve as evidence of economic prosperity, and to be prerequisites for further economic growth. However, this is the first study to examine market performance as a whole, over such a large time period. Presenting a hitherto unknown and inaccessible corpus of data from ancient Babylonia, this international set of contributors are for the first time able to offer an in-depth study of market performance over a period of 2,500 years.
The contributions focus on the market of staple crops, as they were crucial goods in these societies. Over this entire period, all papers provide a similar conceptual and methodological framework resting on a common definition of market performance combined with qualitative and quantitative analyses resting on new and improved price data. In this way, the book is able to combine analysis of the Babylonian period with similar work on the Roman, Early-and Late Medieval and Early Modern period.
Bringing together input from assyriologists, ancient historians, economic historians and economists, this volume will be crucial reading for all those with an interest in ancient history, economic history and economics.
This is part of a research project conducted at the VU University (Vrije Universiteit) Amsterdam, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) on "The efficiency of markets in Pre-Industrial Societies: the case of Babylonia, 485-61 BC".
The lack of direct evidence on the amount of silver in circulation, however, puts a serious limitation for historical research on the monetary development in ancient societies. In this paper we attempt to remedy this by applying a model to available staple price data from first millennium BC Babylonia to estimate the changes of the amount of silver in the economy. In order to do this, in section 2 we introduce a model that establishes a relationship between prices and the quantity of silver in circulation. This establishes the relation between the price level of a staple crop and the growth of the amount of silver in the economy. In section 3, using our model, we calculate the amount of silver in circulation. We find that this decreases considerably, which possibly explains the rise in purchasing power of silver observed in the second century BC. In section 4 we cross-check our model by applying it to medieval and early modern England. We find that our estimates of silver in circulation are close to the independent estimates that exist in the literature. Remarkably, we also find that the influx of Spanish silver in England in the sixteenth century was not as large as is often assumed.