Economic Theory and the Ancient Mediterranean presents a comprehensive introduction to the application of contemporary economic theory to the ancient societies of the Mediterranean Sea from the period of 5000 BCE to 400 CE. Offers an accessible presentation of modern economic theory and its relationships to ancient societies Presents innovative expositions and applications of economic theory to issues in antiquity not often found in the literature Features insightful discussions of the relevance of contemporary economic models to various situations in antiquity Written for a broad range of scholars of ancient Mediterranean regions, including archaeologists, ancient historians, and philologists INDICE: Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Rationale Organization Method Reader Outcomes Themes Relevance and Applicability 1. Production 1.1 The Production Function 1.2 The “Law” of Variable Proportions 1.3 Substitution 1.4 Measuring Substitution 1.5 Specific “Functional Forms” for Production Functions 1.6 Attributing Products to Inputs: Distributing Income from Production 1.7 Efficiency and the Choice of How to Produce 1.8 Predictions of Production Theory 1: Input Price Changes 1.9 Predictions of Production Theory 2: Technological Changes 1.10 Stocks and Flows 1.11 The Distribution of Income 1.12 Production Functions in Achaemenid Babylonia 2. Cost and Supply 2.1 The Cost Function 2.2 Short Run and Long Run 2.3 The Relationship between Cost and Production 2.4 Producers’ Objectives 2.5 Supply Curves 2.6 Demands for Factors of Production 2.7 Factor Costs in General: Wages and Rents 2.8 Allocation of Factors across Activities 2.9 Organizing Production: The Firm 2.10 A More General Treatment of Cost Functions 2.11 The Economics of Mycenaean Vases, I: Supply and Cost 2.12 Accounting for Apparent Cost Changes in Minoan Pottery 2.13 Production in an Entire Economy: The Production Possibilities Frontier 3. Consumption 3.1 Rationality of the Consumer 3.2 The Budget 3.3 Utility and Indifference Curves 3.4 Demand 3.5 Demand Elasticities 3.6 Aggregate Demand 3.7 Evaluating Changes in Well–Being 3.8 Price and Consumption Indexes 3.9 Intertemporal Choice 3.10 Durable Goods and Discrete Choice 3.11 Variety and Differentiated Goods 3.12 Value of Time and Household Production 3.13 Risk, Risk Aversion, and Expected Utility 3.14 Irrational Behavior 3.15 Fixed Prices 3.16 Applying Demand Concepts: Relationships between Housing Consumption, Housing Prices, and Incomes in Pompeii 3.17 The Economics of Mycenaean Vases, II: Demand 4. Industry Structure and the Types of Competition 4.1 Perfect Competition 4.2 Competitive Equilibrium 4.3 Monopoly 4.4 Oligopoly 4.5 Monopolistic Competition 4.6 Contestable Markets 4.7 Buyer’s Power: Monopsony 4.8 The Economics of Mycenaean Vases, 3: Industry Structure 4.9 Ancient Monopoly and Oligopoly: Religion and Foreign Trade 5. General Equilibrium 5.1 General Equilibrium as a Fact and as a Model 5.1.1 The Facts 5.1.2 The Models 5.1.3 The Questions 5.2 The Walrasian Model 5.3 Exchange 5.4 The 2–Sector Model 5.4.1 The Basics with the Lerner–Pearce Diagram 5.4.2 Growth in Factor Supplies 5.4.3 Technical Change 5.5 Existence and Uniqueness of Equilibrium 5.6 Computable General Equilibrium Models 6. Public Economics 6.1 Government in the Economy: Scope of Activities, Modern and Ancient 6.2 Private Goods, Public Goods, and Externalities 6.2.1 Private Goods 6.2.2 Public Goods 6.2.3 Externalities 6.3 Raising Revenue 6.3.1 Taxation 1: Rationales and Instruments 6.3.2 Taxation 2: Effects of Taxes 6.3.3 Taxation 3: Tax Incidence (Who Really Pays?) 6.3.4 Taxation 4: Optimal Tax Systems 6.3.5 Other Revenue Sources 6.4 The Theory of Second Best 6.5 Government Productive Activities 6.5.1 Public Production & Pricing 6.5.2 The Supply of Public Goods and Social Choice Mechanisms 6.5.3 Public Investment and Cost–Benefit Analysis 6.6 Regulation of Private Economic Activities 6.6.1 Rent–Seeking 6.6.2 The Costs of Regulation: The Averch–Johnson Effect 6.7 The Behavior of Government and Government Agencies 6.7.1 Theories of Government 6.7.2 Theories of Bureaucracy 6.7.3 Levels of Government 6.8 Suggestions for Using the Material of this Chapter 7. The Economics of Information and Risk 7.1 Risk 7.1.1 The Ubiquity of Risky Decisions 7.1.2 Concepts and Measurement 7.1.3 Risk and Behavior: Expected Utility 7.1.4 Risk versus Uncertainty: The Substance of Probabilities 7.2 Information and Learning 7.2.1 The Structure of Information 7.2.2 Learning as Bayesian Updating 7.2.3 Experts and Groups 7.3 Dealing with Nature’s Uncertainty 7.3.1 Contingent Markets 7.3.2 Portfolios and Diversification 7.4 Behavioral Uncertainty 7.4.1 Asymmetric Information Problems and Solutions 7.4.2 Strategic Behavior 7.5 Expectations 7.5.1 The Role of Expectations in Resource Allocation Decisions 7.5.2 Adaptive Models of Expectations 7.5.3 The Rational Expectations Hypothesis 7.6 Competitive Behavior under Uncertainty 7.6.1 Production Behavior 7.6.2 Search Problems 7.7 Suggestions for Using the Material of this Chapter 8. Capital 8.1 The Substance and Concepts of Capital 8.1.1 Capital as Stuff 8.1.2 Capital in the Production Function 8.1.3 Stocks, Flows, and Accumulation 8.1.4 Prices and Values 8.1.5 Temporal Aspects of Capital 8.1.6 Measuring Capital 8.1.7 The Labor Theory of Value 8.2 Quasi–Rents 8.3 Interest Rates 8.4 The Theory of Capital 8.4.1 Present and Future Consumption, Investment, and Capital Accumulation 8.4.2 Demand for and Supply of Capital: Flows and Stocks 8.4.3 Capital–Richness and Interest Rates 8.5 Use of Capital by Firms 8.5.1 Investment 8.5.2 Maintenance 8.5.3 Scrapping and Replacement 8.6 Consumption and Saving 8.6.1 Intertemporal Utility Maximization 8.6.2 Hypotheses about Consumption 8.6.3 Individual and Aggregate Savings 8.7 Capital Formation 8.8 Suggestions for Using the Material of this Chapter 9. Money and Banking 9.1 The Services of Money 9.1.1 Money as a Medium of Exchange 9.1.2 Money as a Store of Value 9.1.3 Money as a Unit of Account 9.1.4 Stability of Value 9.1.5 Monetization Prior to Currency 9.2 The Types of Money 9.2.1 Commodity Money 9.2.2 Credit Money 9.2.3 One Special Case of Credit Money: Bank Money 9.3 Some Preliminary Concepts 9.3.1 The Price Level 9.3.2 Inflation 9.3.3 “Nominal” versus “Real” Distinctions 9.3.4 What People in Antiquity Knew 9.4 The Demand for Money 9.4.1 Measuring Money 9.4.2 The Distinctiveness of the Demand for Money 9.4.3 Monetary Theory and Macroeconomics for Ancient Economies?! 9.4.4 The Neoclassical Quantity Theory 9.4.5 Keynesian Monetary Theory 9.4.6 The Contemporary Synthesis 9.5 The Supply of Money 9.5.1 Supply of a Commodity Money 9.5.2 Creation of Money by Banks 9.5.3 The Banking Firm 9.5.4 Financial Intermediation 9.5.5 Exogeneity/Endogeneity of Money Supply and Foreign Exchange 9.5.6 Seigniorage: Making Money by Issuing Money 9.5.7 Bimetallism 9.6 Inflation 9.6.1 Causes of Inflation 9.6.2 Mechanisms of Inflation 9.6.3 Consequences of Inflation 9.7 Monetary Policy 9.7.1 The Players and Their Motives 9.7.2 Choice of Monetary Standard 9.7.3 Influencing the Supply of Money 9.7.4 Influencing the Demand for Money 9.7.5 International Monetary Policies 9.8 Suggestions for Using the Material of this Chapter 10. Labor 10.1 Applying Contemporary Labor Models to Ancient Behavior and Institutions 10.2 Human Capital 10.2.1 Investment in Human Capital 10.2.2 Health 10.2.3 Guilds, Occupational Licensing, and Entry Restriction 10.3 Labor Supply 10.3.1 Utility Analysis of Individual and Family Labor Supply 10.3.2 Life–Cycle/Dynamic Labor Supply 10.3.3 Supply of Labor to Activities 10.3.4 Household Production 10.4 Labor Demand 10.4.1 The Productive Enterprise’s Demand for Labor 10.4.2 Derived Demand 10.5 Labor Contracts 10.5.1 Information Problems and Incentives 10.5.2 The Basis of Pay 10.5.3 Sequencing of Pay 10.5.4 Compensating Differentials in Wages 10.6 Migration 10.6.1 Economic Incentives for Migration 10.6.2 Consequences of Migration 10.6.3 Refugee Migration 10.6.4 Equilibrating Migration Flows when the Wage Rate Doesn’t Adjust 10.7 Families 10.7.1 Marriage 10.7.2 Intra–Family Resource Allocation 10.7.3 Children and the Economics of Fertility and Child Mortality 10.8 Labor and the Family Enterprise 10.8.1 The Farm Family Household and the Separability of Production Decisions from Consumption Decisions 10.8.2 Effects of Missing Markets on Labor Allocation 10.8.3 Restrictions on Household Activities 10.8.4 Implications of the Family Farm Model 10.9 Slavery 10.9.1 The Supply of Slaves 10.9.2 The Demand for Slaves 10.9.3 Investment in Slaves 10.9.4 Market Consequences of Slaves 10.9.5 Slaves’ Incentives 10.10 Suggestions for Using the Material of This Chapter 11. Land and Location 11.1 The Special Characteristics of Land 11.2 Land as a Factor of Production 11.2.1 Supply 11.2.2 Demand 11.3 The Location of Land Uses 11.3.1 The Thünen Model 11.3.2 The Bid–Rent Function 11.3.3 Equilibrium in a Region 11.3.4 Modifying the Social Context 11.4 The Location of Production Facilities 11.4.1 Individual Facilities 11.4.2 Industries 11.5 Consumption and the Location of Marketing 11.5.1 The Structure of Transportation Costs 11.5.2 The Shopping Trade–Off: Frequency versus Storage 11.5.3 Aggregate Demand in a Spatial Market 11.5.4 Hierarchies of Marketplaces: Central Place Theory 11.5.5 Periodic Markets 11.6 Transportation 11.6.1 Infrastructure 11.6.2 Equipment 11.6.3 Pricing of Transportation Services 11.7 Suggestions for Using the Material of this Chapter 12. Cities 12.1 Cities and their Analysis, Modern and Ancient 12.1.1 Classifying Cities 12.1.2 Characteristics of Cities 12.1.3 What Goes on in Cities 12.1.4 Ancient Observations and Contemporary Analytical Emphases 12.2 Economies of Cities 12.2.1 Scale Economies in Production 12.2.2 Externalities 12.2.3 Types of Production 12.3 Housing 12.3.1 The Special Characteristics of Housing 12.3.2 Housing Supply 12.3.3 Housing Demand 12.4 Urban Spatial Structure 12.4.1 The Monocentric City Model 12.4.2 Multiple Categories of Residents 12.4.3 Working at Home 12.4.4 Endogenous Centers 12.4.5 Density Gradients and the Ancient City 12.4.6 Wage Differentials across Cities 12.5 Systems of Cities 12.5.1 Production and Consumption within Any City 12.5.2 Different Types of Cities 12.5.3 The City Size Distribution and Its Responses to Various Changes 12.6 Urban Finance 12.6.1 Local Public Goods 12.6.2 What to Supply and How Much 12.6.3 Raising Revenue 12.7 Suggestions for Using the Material of this Chapter 13. Natural Resources 13.1 Exhaustible Resources 13.1.1 The Theory of Optimal Depletion 13.1.2 Different Deposits 13.1.3 Uncertainty 13.1.4 Exploration 13.1.5 Monopoly 13.2. Renewable Resources 13.2.1 Biological Growth 13.2.2 Harvesting 13.2.3 The Theory of Optimal Use 13.2.4 Open Access and the Fishery 13.3 Resource Scarcity 13.4 The Ancient Mining–Forestry Complex 13.5 Suggestions for Using the Material of this Chapter 14. Growth 14.1 Introduction 14.1.1 Economic Growth: Delimiting the Scope 14.1.2 Growth in Antiquity: Is There Anything to Explain? 14.2 Essential Concepts 14.2.1 Production Functions Again 14.2.2 Technical Change 14.2.3 Growth versus Development 14.3 Neoclassical Growth Theory 14.3.1 The Solow model 14.3.2 Technology and Growth in the Solow Model 14.3.3 Endogenizing Technical Change 14.3.4 Extent of the Market, Division of Labor, and Productivity 14.4 Structural Change 14.4.1 Sectoral Concepts as Organizing Devices 14.4.2 A Two–Sector Model of an Economy 14.4.3 Some Stylized Facts 14.5 Institutions 14.5.1 Property Rights 14.5.2 Governments 14.5.3 Stability and Change 14.6 Studying Economic Growth in Antiquity 14.6.1 What There Is to Explain 14.6.2 Organizing Inquiry about Economic Growth with the Help of Growth Theory 14.6.3 Studying Episodes of Growth Following Declines: Beyond Growth Theory 14.6.4 Summary 14.7 Suggestions for Using the Material of this Chapter 14.7.1 Evidence of Growth 14.7.2 Sectoral Structure
- ISBN: 978-1-118-62787-7
- Editorial: John Wiley & Sons
- Encuadernacion: Cartoné
- Páginas: 600
- Fecha Publicación: 01/08/2014
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés