This collection presents new analyses for the nature and scale of Roman agriculture. It outlines the fundamental features of agricultural production through studying the documentary and archaeological evidence for the modes of land exploitation and the organisation, development of, and investment in this sector.

Often viewed as self-sufficient, Roman farmers actually depended on markets to supply them with a wide range of goods and services, from metal tools to medical expertise. However, the nature, extent, and implications of their market interactions remain unclear. This monograph uses literary and archaeological evidence to examine how farmers – from smallholders to the owners of large estates – bought and sold, lent and borrowed, and cooperated as well as competed in the Roman economy. A clearer picture of the relationship between farmers and markets allows us to gauge their collective impact on, and exposure to, macroeconomic phenomena such as monetization and changes in the level and nature of demand for goods and labor. After considering the demographic and environmental context of Italian agriculture, the author explores three interrelated questions: what goods and services did farmers purchase; how did farmers acquire the money with which to make those purchases; and what factors drove farmers’ economic decisions? This book provides a portrait of the economic world of the Roman farmer in late Republican and early Imperial Italy.

A bold application of economic theory to help provide an understanding of the role that law played in the development of the Roman economy

Thanks to its exceptional size and duration, the Roman Empire offers one of the best opportunities to study economic development in the context of an agrarian world empire. This volume, which is organised thematically, provides a sophisticated introduction to and assessment of all aspects of its economic life.

Explanation of the success and failure of the Roman economy is one of the most important problems in economic history. As an economic system capable of sustaining high production and consumption levels, it was unparalleled until the early modern period. This volume focuses on how the institutional structure of the Roman Empire affected economic performance both positively and negatively. An international range of contributors offers a variety of approaches that together enhance our understanding of how different ownership rights and various modes of organization and exploitation facilitated or prevented the use of land and natural resources in the production process. Relying on a large array of resources - literary, legal, epigraphic, papyrological, numismatic, and archaeological - chapters address key questions regarding the foundations of the Roman Empire's economic system. Questions of growth, concentration and legal status of property (private, public, or imperial), the role of the state, content and limitations of rights of ownership, water rights and management, exploitation of indigenous populations, and many more receive new and original analyses that make this book a significant step forward to understanding what made the economic achievements of the Roman empire possible.

Roman monetary history has tended to focus on the study of Roman coinage but other assets regularly functioned as, or in place of, money. This book places coinage in its broader monetary context by also examining the role of bullion, financial instruments, and commodities such as grain and wine in making payments, facilitating exchange, measuring value and storing wealth. The use of such assets reduced the demand for coinage in some sectors of the economy and is a crucial factor in determining the impact of the large increase in the coin supply during the last century of the Republic. Money demand theory suggests that increased coin production led to further monetization, not per capita economic growth.

The economy of the Roman Empire was predominantly agrarian: Roman landowners, agricultural laborers, and small tenant farmers were highly dependent upon one another for assuring stability. By examining the property rights established by the Roman government, in particular the laws concerning land tenure and the contractual relationships between wealthy landowners and the tenant farmers to whom they leased their land, Dennis P. Kehoe is able to demonstrate how the state fostered economic development and who benefited the most. In this bold application of economic theory, Kehoe explores the relationship between Roman private law and the development of the Roman economy during a crucial period of the Roman Empire, from the second to the fourth century C.E. Kehoe is able to use the laws concerning land tenure, and the Roman government's enforcement of those laws, as a window through which to develop a more comprehensive view of the Roman economy. With its innovative application of the methodologies of law and economics and the New Institutional Economics Law and the Rural Economy in the Roman Empire is a groundbreaking addition to the study of the Roman economy. Dennis P. Kehoe is Professor of Classical Studies at Tulane University. He is the author of several books, including Investment, Profit, and Tenancy: The Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy(University of Michigan Press, 1997). "Kehoe brings his deep expertise in Roman land tenure systems and his broad knowledge of the methodologies of New Institutional Economics to bear on questions of fundamental importance regarding the relationship of Roman law and society. Was governmental policy on agriculture designed to benefit large landowners or small farmers? What impact did it have on the rural economy? The fascinating answers Kehoe provides in this pathbreaking work should occasion a major reassessment of such problems by social and legal historians." ---Thomas McGinn, Department of Classical Studies at Vanderbilt University, and author of The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World: A Study of Social History and the Brothel and Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome "A ground-breaking study using the principles of New Institutional Economics to analyze the impact of legal policy in balancing the interests of Roman tenant-farmers and landowners in the 2-4 centuries C.E. Kehoe's book will be essential reading for historians of the Roman Empire, demonstrating how the government overcame challenges and contradictions as it sought to regulate this enormous sector of the economy." ---Susan D. Martin, Department of Classics, University of Tennessee "In Law and the Rural Economy, Kehoe brings to life the workings of the ancient economy and the Roman legal system. By analyzing interactions between the imperial government, landlords, and tenant farmers in provinces across the Empire, Kehoe opens insights into imperial economic policy. He handles a variety of challenging sources with mastery and wit, and his knowledge of scholarship is extensive and thorough, covering ancient history, textual problems in the sources, legal history and, perhaps most impressively, the modern fields of economic theory and 'law and economics.' Kehoe's innovative and sophisticated methodology sets his work apart. The book will make an important contribution to our understanding of access to the law and the effectiveness of the legal system, important topics for scholars of law, ancient and modern." ---Cynthia J. Bannon, Department of Classical Studies, Indiana University