Open AccessDOI
Risks for Farming Families in the Roman World
Paul V. Kelly
- pp 485-503
TLDR
In this paper, an econometric model is presented which takes a bottom-up approach by simulating the financial and family outcomes for different types of young couples: petty landlords, smallholders and tenants.Abstract:
This chapter seeks to model how climate would have impacted farmers in the Roman world. Climate naturally had a significant effect on this essentially agrarian economy—but can we quantify its relative importance compared to other risks? An econometric model is presented which takes a ‘bottom up’ approach by simulating the financial and family outcomes for different types of young couples: petty landlords, smallholders and tenants. It follows these families over a generation to see who prospered, fell into debt or were ultimately ruined. Two geographic locations are modelled: Egypt and Southern Italy. The model shows that tenants were highly vulnerable to weather variability but that smallholders and petty landlords were relatively insulated from climate risk. For tenants, climate-related risks were certainly more important than the risk of having too many children, but a failure to save some of your surplus in good years would lead to financial ruin.read more
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The Archaeology of Wine Production in Roman and Pre-Roman Italy
TL;DR: A comprehensive overview of the archaeological evidence for the entire Italian peninsula can be found in this paper , including conspicuous, lavish, and theatrical wine production at the Villa dei Quintili just outside Rome.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Climate variation explains a third of global crop yield variability
TL;DR: This study uses detailed crop statistics time series for ~13,500 political units to examine how recent climate variability led to variations in maize, rice, wheat and soybean crop yields worldwide.
Book
The Demography of Roman Egypt
TL;DR: Coale as mentioned in this paper presents a Catalogue of Census declarations Appendices Bibliography Index of census declarations and a survey of census data, including the census returns as demographic evidence, as well as census declarations.
Posted Content
Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy
TL;DR: The economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies as discussed by the authors considers important interlocking themes including taxation, commodity-prices, demography, and army pay and manpower in the Roman economy.
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The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political and Economic Study
TL;DR: In this paper, the economic, social and political forces that shaped the grain market in the Roman Empire were explored, and the response of the Roman authorities to weaknesses in the market and the implications of the failure of local harvests.
Book
Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece: Reconstructing the Rural Domestic Economy
TL;DR: The domestic economy and subsistence risk ancient households and their life cycle adaptive measures in the agricultural system structural constraints and the household vulnerability cycle response strategies to food shortage are discussed in this article.