Money, Culture, and Well-Being in Rome's Economic Development, 0-275 CE

Daniel Hoyer, Ph.D. (2014), is Project Manager of the Evolution Institute's Seshat: Global History Databank and Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto. He has published extensively on a wide range of historical topics, notably concerning the epigraphic and numismatic evidence from imperial Rome.

"Daniel Hoyer’s, Money, Culture, and Well-Being in Rome's Economic Development, 0-275 CE offers an even-handed appraisal of current debates in Roman economic history as well as novel interpretations derived from numismatic and epigraphic sources. (...) this book manages to tell a cohesive and compelling story through an intensive study of a limited body of evidence and a flexible although occasionally frustrating methodological framework.(...) His book ultimately presents a credible picture that deserves attention."Colin P. Elliott in BMCR 2018.11.40

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsList of Roman Emperors1 Introduction: Approaching the Imperial Roman Economy1 Central Aims of the Book2 Who Will Read This? Target Audiences3 Lingering Questions about Imperial Rome4 The Many Faces of Roman Economic History5 From Fine-Grained to ‘Big Picture’: Methods and Treatment of the Evidence6 The Contribution of Modern Thinking to Ancient Problems7 Book Organization8 Terms and Definitions2 The Gift That Kept on Giving: Perpetual Endowments and the Role of Prosociality in Rome’s Economic Development1 The Evolution of Prosocial Traits from the Early Days of Rome2 Prosociality, Charity, and Social Capital: How Elite Benefaction Came to Be3 Perpetual Foundations: The Gift That Kept on Giving4 What Lies under the Epiphenomena?3 Investing in the Roman Economy: Material Evidence for Economic Development1 Benefactions as Wealth Generators2 Investment Opportunities in the Roman Economy3 Money in the Roman Economy: The Numismatic Evidence4 Supplying the Demand: Coinage, Monetization, and Market Development4 Aligning Public and Private Interests: Public Building, Private Money, and Urban Development1 Public Needs and Private Incentives2 Rome: A World of Cities3 Public Building in the Cities of Roman Africa: A Case Study4 Urbanization and the Development of the Non-Agrarian Sectors5 The Surprisingly Short Reach of the Roman State6 The Public Deeds of Private Citizens7 Aligning Interests5 Measuring Economic Performance beyond GDP: Economic Growth, Income Inequality, and Roman Living Standards1 Real Growth in the Pre-Modern World? Debates, Controversies, and Confusion in Roman Economic History2 Proxy Evidence: Extrapolation or Hypothesis Testing?3 Rome’s 99 %: Economic Capacity and the Distribution of Wealth4 Sharing the Spoils of Success: Increasing Living Standards with Public Goods5 Collective Action and Prosociality in the Creation of Public Goods6 From Prosociality to Civil Strife: Conflict, Stagnation, and Growing Regional Divides in the Third Century CE1 An Overview of the ‘Crises’ of the Third Century2 What Really Happened after 235 CE?3 Money, Investment, and Markets4 Production and Exchange5 The End of Roman Prosociality?Conclusion: Rome’s Place in a Global History of DevelopmentAppendix 1: List of Inscriptions from the Western Empire Recording Interest being DrawnAppendix 2: List of Building Inscriptions from the North African Provinces Recording the SponsorBibliographyIndex