Explain the main features of economic expansion under the roman empire ?
Answers
There are no government accounts, central records of taxation, systematic assessment of trade and manufacture, and no ancient analyses of economic phenomena. We can get information only from proxy data, which must be interpreted through economic models. Notwithstanding the above, an assessment of whether the Empire experienced economic growth poses two problems. Is there evidence for such a phenomenon? Can it reasonably be integrated into the overall economic system?
Economic growth is the ‘sustained increase in wealth over time (normally per year) measured in the real pro capita production of goods and services’[1]. This definition distinguishes between ‘aggregate growth’, which could simply be a consequence of the Empire’s increased population, and ‘per capita growth’, which indicates an increase of production proportionate to the number of people. The definition also offers the idea that the increase in wealth must not be a one-off. This would be made possible, for instance, by a year of very good harvests or the redistribution of war booty. Growth must be sustained over time, implying that there must be economic structures capable of sustaining it.
The Ancient Roman economy was primarily based on agriculture, carried out by means of relatively backward technology. Industry and trade had limited importance. Economic growth cannot easily be integrated into such model if, looking at it from a fully primitivist point of view, we interpret it as completely static. But it is possible to see in it a degree of dynamism and a tendency toward progress and trade, which would justify economic growth.