The Deep Imprint of Roman Sandals: Evidence of Long-lasting Effects of Roman Rule on Personality, Economic Performance, and Well-Being in Germany

Michael Fritsch (), Martin Obschonka (), Fabian Wahl and Michael Wyrwich
Additional contact information
Martin Obschonka: Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

No 2020-005, Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena

Abstract: We investigate whether the Roman presence in the southern part of Germany nearly 2,000 years ago had a deep imprinting effect with long run consequences on a broad spectrum of measures ranging from present-day personality profiles to a number of socioeconomic outcomes and why. Today's populations living in the former Roman part of Germany score indeed higher on certain personality traits, have higher life and health satisfaction, longer life expectancy, generate more inventions and behave in a more entrepreneurial way. These findings help explain that regions under Roman rule have higher present-day levels of economic development in terms of GDP per capita. The effects hold when controlling for other potential historical influences. When addressing potential channels of a long term effect of Roman rule the data indicates that the Roman road network plays an important role as a mechanism in the imprinting that is still perceptible today.

Keywords: Romans; personality traits; culture; well-being; regional performance; Limes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 N9 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-03-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-gro, nep-hap and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2020/wp_2020_005.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The deep imprint of Roman sandals: Evidence of long-lasting effects of Roman rule on personality, economic performance, and well-being in Germany (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2020-005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Markus Pasche ().